 I am Tim Shaw and welcome to my exhibition. And it was really the one Iraq where I started to create work about conflict. Such isolation. The casting of a dark democracy that I think stains our own democracy. Ship the society and ship the country in which we live. Tim, how are you sir? Yes, very well. Thank you very much Chris. Good, good. So we met at the wonderful Martin Webster's film premiere for his film Penitent down there in sunny Cornwall. And as I was saying to you before Tim, I'm delighted to be able to chat to someone in an area I don't know an awful lot about. Although as an author, I guess we're both artists. What would you term yourself a sculptor? Yes, I would. I've heard the term visual artist banded around. Is that something? Well, I am that as well. But essentially I'm a sculptor and sort of traditionally, you know, that would be an artist that perhaps specializes in the shaping of three dimensional form in materials such as clear wax or stone or. But these days it's, it's sort of, it can, it can be used as quite a wide in a wide in a wide way to go into installation as well and we're light and sound is used and smell perhaps. Tim, how is it because I know the sheer amount of time it goes into creating well creating any anything of value. And I've just made I've been making a sheaf knife with my son and it's taken weeks. In fact, the whole process has gone into years now. And I would imagine it there must be a point is there where it starts to I mean you've got to get noticed to earn the money in order to be able to do the profession it would I be right. Yeah, of course, you know, we all need to to to eat since we need to live somewhere and and so yeah, it doesn't it doesn't that doesn't come out of out of thin air unless you're extremely rich or whatever. So, for me, I do need to sell work and receive commissions in order to support what I what I do do. And I'm lucky enough to be able to have that I work. I do receive commissions and I do show and sell my work. And in fact, we're on the second last day of an exhibition, which is on at the moment in St Ives and I'm a Monday. Sometimes I'm a Monday gallery that is. And it's a show that's called Fox Mabalic, which means clear the way. Yes, and and I'm guessing you need to earn a bit you need to have a bit of money available because the materials with the size of your sculptings are quite significant. Yes. I mean, I suppose, yes, bronze is not having things produced in in in bronze is it's definitely not. It's definitely not cheap. Quite the opposite. But, you know, I think as a sculptor, you can also, you know, you can use words which is readily available. Branches, you know, lots of different materials as well. But whenever I'm making something, I try not to count the cost and, you know, the idea of what what it is I want to create becomes the, you know, the bigger thing and then, you know, finding the funding. In order to do that. It kind of come comes along. Yes, got you. And so Tim, you're born in Belfast. Right at the. You were born just before the trouble so your younger years would have been right in the in the thicker things. Yes. In the early 70s, I think we're, you know, looking back quite crazy times actually. And I don't really, I don't really have much memory, you know, from from before the troubles. I suppose I would have been six then. 1970 I was born in 1964. And, you know, early life memories really growing up in Belfast. Well, the army seemed to always be there. And in fact, when the army first arrived on the streets of Belfast. You know, we lived in a Protestant area and soldiers were welcome. And in the early days, in fact, our mothers would bring tea to the soldiers. And I remember jumping onto the, you know, the wagons and talking to the soldiers and, you know, playing with rubber bullets. Believe it or not, and, and being given army badges from their hats and all of that. So, and then obviously, you know, when they, when it began to get very dangerous, I think they, you know, they, it all became very separated. You know, it probably wasn't a great thing to be close to a soldier because that was a target. But, you know, I think at the time we, I think, I think at the time we sort of had this inbuilt instinct that everything was okay. We were all safe. There weren't, there wasn't danger, but looking back at it retrospectively, it was a dangerous place to be. It goes without saying because there were bomb explosions, there were shootings and a lot in the early days and in the early 70s. And I remember as a kid being in the centre of Belfast on a day called Bloody Friday, which very few people will have any knowledge of outside Northern Ireland. Many will know about Bloody Sunday, but on Bloody Friday, the IRA planted 25 bombs or close to 19 of which went off. Within the city centre, certainly within a, I think a four mile radius. 17 of those went off within the first 30 minutes, I believe. And certainly, you know, by 90 minutes, the 19 had gone off. So you can imagine what chaos and pandemonium that brought to the streets and to the people of Belfast that were shopping that day in the centre. And it was a case of, you know, running one way and not knowing whether you were running away from or into the next bomb. And I think the IRA blamed the, said they had given warning to the security forces. But, you know, whatever warning you would have given, it would have, no security forces or emergency services probably could have dealt with such a ferocity of bombing that day within such a short period of time. And very few people will know about that from outside Northern Ireland. And certainly, you know, younger people won't have any knowledge of that either. Tim, do you have a stance on conflict, on war, either personally or professionally? Do I have a stance? Well, does your work, is it are you trying to, you know, put a message out there because it's the pieces that I've seen are obviously military or have a military theme to them? I guess I'm a realist in that conflict has been there from the beginning of time. And I think what my work hopefully does is it shows what we do, shows what we are, and with one particular piece called Man on Fire, it's about the absolute horror of war. And I would like to think with that piece that we look at it and reflect. And we remember that when we go down the road of conflict, this is what is achieved. Nothing good comes from it. And if there's a way to stop something happening, then that is the path that should be taken. I mean, for instance in Ukraine, you know, what good is coming from that? And it's the people at the top, Putin, for example. You know, this is all about him and his idea of what, of expansionism, and it's based on, you know, probably old fashioned ideas. We live in a world now, it's, the world is now too small for us to have these conflicts. You know, we need humanity now needs to get on with saving the planet. And, you know, these ideas of expansionism are just old fashioned and ridiculous. Yes. And the thing that was coming to mind when you're talking about your Man on Fire piece is that it's not just an incident that you see on the news. I mean, this is what your piece relates to the chap on the tank that was set on fire. But it's affected you. It's to a degree affected me, everybody that's witnessed that incident through the media. But of course, the soldiers concerned. It's not, it's not like a one off thing. Is it? This is all these is trauma embedded in people's minds for the rest of the rest of their lives. It's, it's, yes, incredible. I guess your works helping to help in helping to highlight that. Yes, I think, you know, the terrible thing is with with conflict and, you know, it's the fallout that comes from that. And the people that have seen seen dreadful things before the in front of the very eyes, you can't unsee that. You know, you can't press rewind and take another path. Once you've seen something, you've seen it and you and you can't obliterate. It's the kind of pleasure you have to you have to deal with that. And I mean, my God, a lot of people at the moment have seen dreadful things. And in Ukraine, you know, well, I was going to say children and mothers, but anybody. Yes, exactly. Yes, sorry. No, no, no, continue. I'm a really a for listener. And I was listening a couple of weeks ago to your own correspondence or from our own correspondence. And Katie and there's somebody out in Maripul. And, you know, this, this, they were just documenting. This man had gone along the road and he hadn't realized until he sort of gone over a dead body that it was actually a dead body. And, you know, it had sunk in the mud. And it wasn't till afterwards that he thought he'd gone over some bit of rubbler or something. And it's just really dreadful that. Did you study? Did you go to art school, university? Yes, I did my foundation in Manchester at Manchester Polytechnic. And then I then I did my degree from the School of Art. And then I left. I was hoping to go and do an MA in London at some stage, but I decided to after I left college. I worked across Southern England, based in myself and Bristol, working on various restoration and conservation, building old building conservation projects. I worked in Basin, Stoke and Kent's and Chester and several projects in and around. Bristol as well. But it wasn't too long before I realized that I really just needed to get on and make sculpture. And I give that job up and I was lucky enough to find a gallery in London that would take all my work short and started to sell work. Did you learn a lot about the profession when you were restoring items? Well, it was more I decided here when I left that I'd be working on medieval cathedrals and and it wasn't. It really wasn't that it was more sort of restoring old buildings. There was a tutor tar folly tar and a crucifixion that I also worked on. So I wasn't learning about the craft of sculpture really and it was more sort of just restoring buildings. And when you started your studies, Tim, did you know you wanted to be a sculptor or did you try your hand at different areas first? No, I've always been very single-minded there in that way. When I was at school, I wasn't until I was about 14 or 15. Yeah, I was probably one of those extremely annoying kids that was disruptive. And, you know, always getting into trouble for not, you know, just very petty offenses, let's say. But there was a quite a lot of them. And one day my art teacher said, Tim, I would like you to work with some clay. And I thought, oh great, this is another medium that I can throw around the classroom with people. And he said, you know, just work away there. And I said, well, what do you want me to do with this? And he said, I don't know, you know, make some, make a head, make some hands. So I did literally that, sat down and started to create these forms, human forms. And pretty much straight away. And you, within that time, I connected with a gift that I had and knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And that's what I do. And there was never any question from that point onwards that this is what I would do. As you can imagine, you know, growing up at that time in, well, I guess would be anywhere, but growing up at that time, particularly in Northern Ireland where the artistic culture wasn't that great. You know, it's forever being told that, well, this is just a phase that you're going through, or, you know, you're going to have to get a proper job one day. And so there was always that big challenge and question to get over, you know, how would I survive as an artist? And that made me all the more determined, really. And so, you know, when I went to Art College in Manchester Polytechnic and then on to Art College here in Falmouth, I worked extremely hard and just always knew my vision was very clear as to what I would do. And it's pretty much remained so ever since that time I'm now 57. And for many years now, I've just made, every day I've made my sculpture. Is it going back to Belfast, Tim? Is it common knowledge in the community who paints these murals? Is it common knowledge who the artist is? Yeah. That's a really good question. And I can't answer that. But, you know, I imagine in the communities such as the Falls Road, you know, nationalist areas or Protestant areas such as the Shankle Road, where you see many of these murals, I'm sure in those communities it will be well known. There'll be some very gifted individual along one of those roads. And they're given the job of being the muralist. You know, perhaps it wouldn't, on a world stage, it wouldn't be so sort of grand. But, you know, certainly within those areas, there would have been a lot of time, you know, I guess, given over to thinking, you know, how they would be made and what they want to portray. And they're the very powerful pieces of work. Pretty unique, aren't they really? You don't really see such a political statement anywhere else in the world. I might be wrong, but not in that sort of form anyway. Well, they're very direct. I think that, you know, one of the things with growing up in Northern Ireland and at that time that, you know, as you know, communities were very divided. You had your nationalist areas. You had your Protestant areas. And in the early days, those were very divided. And as a Protestant, you may not have felt very comfortable going into a nationalist area. And the demarcations were very clearly presented. Where I lived, not on my actual road, but not far away, you would have pavements, the actual pavements, which would, the curbs, which would have the colours red, white and blue on them. You would have flags with the red hand of Ulster on it. And then obviously in the nationalist areas, green, white and gold. And the tricolor, tricolor. Yes, for friends at home, kidnapping was a big, was a big problem. And very often the innocents were caught up in that, weren't they? People coming back from the pub that got mistaken for a gunman or something. And then they disappeared only to turn up several days later, having been tortured and dead on the side of the road. Yes, I don't know a great deal about that. And I think that you may, but people did disappear. I know that, again, you know, we have this, I know for example, if I go home and the troubles aren't really talked about, and you never really talked about them. And so it's taken a long time for me to sort of unravel what precisely it was. But in there there's murky memories of, you know, I remember looking up the road one day and seeing the whole wall of a house had disappeared. And just a disarray of a bed and you could see into the bedroom and the living room. And that whole wall had collapsed. I can't actually remember an explosion. And although probably where I lived, which was, you know, fairly nice area, but probably within a quarter of a mile there might have been maybe up to about 10 bombs that went off over time. But we never really discussed it. You know, I remember around the corner when the library blew up because it felt as if it nearly blew me out of bed. And then also the chap that lived opposite, not directly opposite, but one opposite and one house to the left was killed in his house. And the neighbors next door who were a Catholic, young married Catholic couple had moved in. And the sooner had they moved in that there was a trace of a bullet hole through the window and they moved out pretty quickly thereafter. So all those, those are murky memories. But they have a residue and some tried to forget those things. And I guess as an artist, you recall them and you try to sort of give them what just, yeah, they're with me. Those things are with me. And there is a residue there. And I remember, for example, recently, when I was visiting home with my sister and nephews and nieces, we decided that we would go and have a walk on Divus Mountain, Black Mountain, which if I remember, Chris, you were posted to Belfast, weren't you? You'd spent time there. Yeah, I was actually part of my post and I was on Divus Mountain. There used to be a little base up there. I can't even, to be honest, was it a sangle or something was there? I just remember there's a small enclosure, just big enough to run around in the evening, but not much bigger than that. Okay, so Divus Mountain was MOD land. So it was all cordoned off. You weren't allowed to, nobody, the public were not allowed to walk on that mountain. So it was all cordoned off and this where the British forces were. And it's only been recent times that it's been opened up to the public. When I say recent, maybe in the last 10 or 15 years, and although I could stand corrected to that, somebody else would be able to tell me exactly when. And I thought, well, let's go for a walk on that mountain because where I lived in North Belfast, it was quite close to that mountain. You'd see it off in the distance and you'd see the big communication towers there as well. So I was very interested to do that and we took a road, I think it's called the Hightown Road, or somewhere close to there to get to that, to get to the Divus Mountain. I remember travelling along it and just talking about residue, just feeling, this road feels, it's got a bad feeling about it and I couldn't put my finger on what it was. And we turned the corner and there was a little memorial to three soldiers who'd been taken from a pub probably and kidnapped and taken up there and executed. And all along that road is where actually these two, where the disappeared, were buried. Which of us to learn afterwards. So it's funny how travelling along a road has that residue that you can sense as to do with the past. Yes, like a sort of dark energy. Yes, a dark energy, that's what that road had and you could still feel it today. I'm interested to know how after coming out of your studies, your career began. Do you have to get yourself a workshop or do you live, do you get a flat that's got room to work in? Okay, so how did I start? Well, I was kind of fortunate in that, as I said before, that just after leaving art college, I went to work as a restorer, a conservator of old buildings and sculpture. And I wasn't particularly happy doing that or certainly seeing that as a career that I would be following for the rest of my professional life. And at that time, probably like every youngster, you would just think, how do I get on the right road here? And I remember my mother at the time saying, why don't you get in touch with this? He was called Effie McWilliam and he was probably one of Northern Ireland's best known sculptors who lived in London for most of his professional life. And my mother and I had visited the Ulster Museum back in 1982 or thereabouts to see a major solo show of his work. And I was fascinated by it. There's a series called Women in Bomb Blast that he created and that was very evocative and powerful, expressive. And those images stayed with me and my mother had said, get in contact with that man and I said, well, he's hardly going to respond to me. Anyway, in those days, you go to the library by and look at a book and find an artist's address, postal address. So I did write to him thinking I'd never get a reply, but the following week it did and at that time he was 82. I think he'd written, well, you know, I'm an old man now. I don't know whether I'll be of much help to you or not, but come and visit me. So I did do the set and I went to visit Effie as he was called at his house in Holland Park, London. And I was met at the door by him and came in and we spent the next couple of hours just chatting away and, you know, he'd met people like Picasso. He'd spent time in Paris and so he's very, very interesting. He made me laugh when he said myself and William Scott, one of the other Northern Irish, well, actually of Scottish descent, but educated Northern Ireland did, gone to the Slade, then headed to Paris as he put it, to be French. And I think a lot of people, a lot of young artists probably went to Paris to be French at that time. Anyway, he gave me a contact and he said, I want you to contact this man and tell him that I sent you. And I said, Cheerio to Effie McWilliam and got in contact with this chap who's called Mark Blaisburg, who ran the Albemarle Gallery in London, right in the centre of London. I went to visit and he liked the work, he liked what I did. And then he sent me away with a check to say, get on with it now. And that's what I did. And I had my first solo show at the Albemarle Gallery and get this, I wrote to Effie McWilliam a couple of years later just to thank him and to send him this invite. And to say that, well, this happened as a result of meeting you. I'd like you to come to my exhibition and he wrote back and said, I will come to your exhibition on one condition that you've come to my exhibition the following day when it will open in the gallery just round the corner. There was a nice little coincidence to that. So he came to the show, I then went to his show and sadly a couple of months later he died of cancer. He hadn't been very well. And then a gallery was opened in his honour in Banbridge, Northern Ireland called the Effie McWilliam Gallery. And that is where I had my first major public show in 2015. Yes, we must give a thank you for all those artists out there that have helped a youngster come along because I had a similar thing when I wrote my first memoir and I realised how difficult it was to get one of these elusive publishing contracts. I thought, I thought, right, I'll take a different approach. I'll try and take the backdoor approach. And I wrote to about three authors and just introduced myself. Fortunately, we had an email then so it was a lot easier. And I just said, hi, my name's Chris, I've written my first memoir. Would you be kind enough to read the first couple of pages? And I phrased it like that as though, you know, it can't be that hard to read two pages for somebody. And there was a chap, I believe his name was Tim. He wrote a book called White Mischief. It was all about the history of cocaine. And he very kindly wrote back to me and he gave me one bit of advice in that email that then allowed me to go and completely reshape or reshape my writing. And if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be where I am today or certainly wouldn't have enjoyed the successes that I've enjoyed. And the other chap or one of the other chats that I wrote to said, Chris, this is amazing work. I've spoken to my publisher and he wants to publish you immediately. I was like, yes, the backdoor approach worked. Where were you creating your works of art, Tim, at this stage? Well, listen, I would also like to say, Chris, that, you know, those early years, which for me were the early 90s really. So I graduated in 1989. And then it's really in the early 90s that, you know, you're trying to sort of form your way. And that's why I came back to Cornwall, because I was able to come back to a farm where I had rented a room during my student days the last year. I was able to come back and use one of the barns as a studio and it was able to live work in a relatively inexpensive way as opposed to trying to do that in London. And I'm still here today on this farm. I've got a few studios now. I haven't just stayed here. I did have time in London and Germany and various residencies across Europe. But I always come back to here. And I think that was a key to being able to do what I do, to keep expenses as low living and studio expenses as low as you could be. There is a drawback to that. That's that you're 300 miles from London where, you know, the machinery, the networking of career building does go on. So you have to go to the city to meet the people that you need to meet. And that's where you exhibit and people see your work. Not saying that that doesn't happen in other places too, but I've always felt that I've needed to show in London and meet the people that I need to. And so, as I said, during those former years spent here just working away in the studio, did a little bit of teaching fun with School of Art, which became fun with university. And just really, you know, had my head to the ground still on that and just carved away, really. As I was saying earlier, I had my first solo show in 1992. God, that is a long time ago. And then I had another one in 1995 and 97 in London. And I began to say that I was able to sell work and, you know, had followers. And then I guess the momentum built. Then I was, I did a show at Falmouth Gallery and from that came a pretty major commission from the Eden Project, which I worked on from 2000 to 2004. And then that sort of amplified the work and put it on a stage whereby a million people or so would say it every year. And then I began to show with a gallery down here called Goldfish that then became Millennium and then became Animal Monday. We've worked with its director called Joseph Clark. He's been a great supporter. And then I had a residency, a fellowship at the Kenneth Armitage Foundation. We had a wonderful supporter called Michael Sandel. Who was instrumental in that. And that began to put the work on a London stage. And things grew from that, really. Tim, what was the incident that happened? Was it silenced here? Am I pronouncing it right? Salinas. Salinas, sorry. Yes. So Salinas was the... Okay, that came from the Rites of Dionysus, which is the commission that the Eden Project commissioned me. I was asked by the Eden Project, would I create a piece that would tell the story about wine production or something to do with wine? And I thought, well, it is a good opportunity to go back to the beginnings and let's work on the subject of Dionysus, the god of the vines or the vine or grapes or nature god, really. And Salinas was the tutor of Dionysus, commonly depicted as this... sort of large squat figure. And I decided to crit this figure with antlers because the Dionysian writes for all about fertility, really, as well. So I produced this piece, this Salinas piece that was kind of very shaped by these depictions, depictions of Salinas from classical Greece. This figure with an erect penis. And so this figure that I created was about eight foot high. And that actually came after a residency that I won at the British School of Athens. And where I went off to do research in many of the ancient Greek sites. So that piece came after, came out of that. And so I created this figure in foam with wooden antlers, which I first showed at Goldfish and then Goldfish took this show to London, to the east end of London in a place called Viner Street. This was around 2007. No, to that, yes, 2007. I think 2007 they did a show there. Viner Street at that time was quite a trendy street in which many young galleries were opening up. So there's quite a lot of excitement, private views when they were all in the whole place. The whole street was crowded full of art followers and gallery people and all sorts. Anyway, I showed this piece there in the yard and behind doors actually. One of the days this chap came in, hooded chap with a baseball bat and smashed it up into bits. And then I believe left saying that I was worshiping the wrong god. I wasn't there at the time. It was just a poor gallery person behind the desk that witnessed this. It must have been quite traumatic for her, I'd imagine. Then it arrived the following day or the next day or two. It arrived in the double-page spread and the paper about it connected to an article about art and vandalism. I'm guessing had he assumed it was the devil or something? I really, really don't know. Was it somebody that was psychotic? Was it somebody with very extreme religious beliefs? Could it have been another artist carrying out of art performance? I think several people had said, oh, is this something that I had done? Was this a publicity stunt that I myself and the gallery had pulled off? Certainly not because the piece had been collected by a very major art collector. They were very happy about what had happened. Yes, I bet. Can you tell us about your military pieces, Tim, or the military-related ones? Yes, so the military... I think let's call them the conflict or the pieces that are about conflict and war. I think that all evolved out of... When I was working on the Eden project and working on the... about the Dionysian myths and I created this piece. I think it was of Orpheus and it was a sacrificial piece where in classical literature Orpheus' head is ripped up from his body by the Minades who were the followers of Dionysus. And I decided that I would produce... put his head on a pike and surround it by seven herds' heads, also on pikes. In other words, I wanted to produce this sacrificial thing and the Minades was alleged that they would go into the mountains and drink wine and become intoxicated and had this superhuman strength where they would rip animals apart and indeed some would sacrifice humans as well. So that's why I created this scene. But when I was making this and when I put the first head on a pike it was actually around the time of the first beheading in Iraq. I actually had... the heads was telling a completely different story but the timing was... well, it was just at this time and the heads had to be... there was a lot of complaints were made about this so the heads had to be taken out because visitors weren't very happy about that. But it started to make me very aware of when law and order breaks down and we become intoxicated by conflict and war that humanity starts to break down and obviously early 2000s from there onwards you have the beginning of the war in Iraq and this is what you were saying where a country was invaded and society was breaking down or being ripped apart this is probably a better way of saying it and so I started to become conscious of war really from that point and also I think at that time I hadn't really... I'd never made work about Northern Ireland I'd always shied away from it and people used to say why haven't you made work about where you grew up and conflict and I didn't want to and it was really the war in Iraq where I started to create work about conflict and it wasn't until... well the first piece that I created was called Casting a Dark Democracy and it was based on the very infamous photograph of the hooded Abu Ghraib figure which we'll all know and it's when the Marines, the US Marines put a prisoner who was cloaked in a blanket I think he would have been naked and then he was cloaked in a blanket put on a probably... I'd say a box of... some box with a hood over his head and he was given these electrical wires to hold and I think he may have been told that if he fell off the box he would fall into water and be electrocuted anyway the image... well I first saw that image it had such a powerful resonance and you looked at it and thought where does this come from? what time does this come from? it looked like something that had been dug out of the ground from long ago medieval in appearance and yet these were the images that had just come to light in 2004 of these torture scenes and that was just one of many photographs that were taken but it was that image that for me really told the story of a war that just seemed at best controversial and at worst illegal and to this day it seems controversial and I just felt that we should not have invaded Iraq and so what I did do is I created the piece that you see there based on that image I created at a height of 5.5 meters about 18 foot in height on a wooden plinth the figure itself is made from steel barbed wire and black agricultural plastic is stretched over it in the shape of that figure and then it overlooks a pool of oil the first version of it is an elongated shadow if you like of the figure itself and that represents it's the casting of a dark democracy that I think stains our own democracy and of course we now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction embedded as yes and even if there were smashing a modern civilised country back into the Stone Age isn't the way that we need to do things is it yes I think that was a dictator and a terrible man but did that constitute us going in and blowing the place apart I know what I think yes Tim two more things for you did you want to talk about was it man on fire I'm just looking at some pictures as we're it's up to you how much because of what you said to me earlier I know there's stuff that you can't divulge but did you want to talk about it at all yes some man on fire you'll remember that in 2005 there were these very visceral horrible images of they were posted across the press of a riot scene in Basra and it had these soldiers that were clambering out of an APC warrior and in the riots petrol bombs had been thrown at the warrior car and I think one had gone right into the into the actual vehicle and got what an awful thing that must have been setting the whole inside of the warrior vehicle on fire and out of the hatch came these soldiers on fire jumping from the warrior and I remember just looking at these images and thinking this is the true reality and the true cost of the horror of war this is what war is about and just seeing this soldier diving from the tank on fire so I produced this piece called tank on fire and just really just showing that image I guess and then I created from there from some other photographs that were related to that particular event soldiers running on fire and I just wanted to create this piece that also could say that roughly at that time well a couple of years on 2007 I think was the terrorist attack on Glasgow airport and we saw the two terrorists who just crashed into the tried to crash into the airport with well trying to blow up the airport and one of them had got was pictured sort of running from the car on fire and this is that famous scene of somebody with a fire extinguisher trying to put him out put the fire out and I don't know these images that image as well as the ones taken from Basra 2005 it just had a real resonance for me it just didn't leave my mind and I just needed to make it make these pieces tank on fire and man on fire why I don't know it's you know I suppose as a kid often saw vehicles burnt out and scenes after riots and you know looking at a building after it had been burnt out or an explosion I don't know the mind and the imagination fills in what the eyes haven't seen and with those images I guess it really disturbed me and it made me think about you know that I guess this person alive that has been consumed by flames grasping on to life and on a precipice lunging forward with arms outstretched trying to grasp on to life with death consuming him or her and that's that's very disturbing and I don't know I needed to make it I needed to make that piece and so I created a small version of it first of all well first of all I made tank on fire and then I made this version of man on fire and put it on a white pedestal and wrote on the pedestal what God of love inspires such hatred in the hearts of men and poured oil over it and I think it was a comment on at that time about how religion fuels people to go to war but in fact the real war is about is about loss and gain of land and power and that being oil as well control of oil and that becomes the real God yes none more so than at this moment in time yeah and so I decided to create a thought after it made that piece I really need to make this a big larger version of this so I created man on fire in spring 2009 it was the next piece I made after casting the dark democracy and I don't know why I just decided to create it at a monumental scale and then I finished my fellowship in London and I got shown a few times 2014 2018 in public shows across the UK and an opportunity came up where this piece could be cast into bronze and for the purposes of it being gifted to the state and it is in the process of now being cast into bronze and it will be installed next year in front of a museum I shan't say where and it's about five metres tall and four and a half metres long so it's a quite a monumental piece and I reworked it during lockdown for a whole year because it's when I originally created the piece it was designed for it to be shown running across the gallery floor and now it will be going to be out in the public domain and it needs to be on a pedestal so you'll be able to walk up to it and see underneath it and what is it about it's about the horror of war and the true cost of war I really can't say more than that Well congratulations on the commission and Tim just the last thing just of interest to me really is the whole green man thing I wasn't aware of the green man until that was it true detective with Matthew McConaughey and it started this notion of a green man started to sort of come into my life at least I realise there's an awful lot of history behind it Listen Chris I'll come to that in a sec but there's something probably quite important that I've left out here that I'm just thinking about it now there's a piece called Mother There is Blue There is Dangerous and you might see it there on my website sort of a blue room and I'm bringing it up because I suppose it ties together quite a lot of what I do and it's quite an interesting story as well about memory I've said that I was in Belfast during Bloody Friday but there's this other events and I've never been able to make a total sense of it but there's a memory of being in a restaurant well there was a canteen you didn't really have restaurants the early 70s in Belfast the idea of a restaurant may not have really existed but it was probably a sort of a cafe area in the store department store I remember so I have this memory of my mother saying get ready we're going to go to town and I remember playing with this little car a little dinky you know we had these little dinky cars if you can remember them or matchbox cars and as soon as she said that awful churning feeling began in my stomach I just remember thinking something horrible is going to happen today and I didn't want to go to town and my mother said just get yourself together and we're going off to town and we went to meet her friend and her son her son being a lifelong friend of mine and we met them in the cafe a bomb went off fairly nearby and I remember freezing to the chair remember what I was eating before I was putting in my mouth at that moment it was a tomato another one goes off closer and the fear that I had in me was dreadful because I just thought I wasn't sure if we were going to live out this moment and then a really massive explosion happens almost that the air expanded and then just blew forward and it was like an electric or a petrol blue colour the air was just like a petrol blue colour and smoke started coming up the stairs and things went flying through the air I remember the clatter of trays and panic panic set in and people ran one way and then another and we finally got out and I think my mother and I walked home that day through the streets there was a lot of panic and it was never really spoken about and I mentioned it many years later and my mother said oh yes I remember this thing but many things happened it was a time when every day there were bombings and shootings and it wasn't until I created man on fire and casting a dark democracy in other words the work that came from Iraq and somebody said to me what will I make next and I thought I need to keep give shape and form to this memory and an opportunity came up in Greece to go and do a residency it was at the Capatos Gallery in Athens and before I left for Athens I went back to Belfast as I would do every summer to see my folks and friends and I said to my friends whose name I won't mention the lifelong friend that was there that day we were out in a pub half a dozen of mates and I turned to him and I said I'm going to make this piece of work about this memory that I have and I said do you remember being in this restaurant when a bomb goes off nearby and he just froze and looked at me looked blank and said no and at that moment I thought well let's move the moment on let's carry on who's the next round whatever I left for Greece soon after and I thought this is problematic where does this memory sit now sit and my mother's dead so she wouldn't be able to back this up nevertheless it's something that I've carried all my life just it's just there earlier to you that once you've seen something you can't on see it you can't rewind memory and but the person that was there that is alive today didn't appear to remember so I carried on with this piece that became an installation based on that memory and in the installation there's chairs and tables and clothes or the chairs tables there's sort of detritus that you might find of left in a panic situation of coats, handbags you know when something like that happened you have no time to get your handbag and pick it up and take it or imagine so and there is just this sound strange sounds of you could say sort of based on a saran almost and on the walls are projected these figures running running to the door continually running just shadows because what I remember is not people but almost people as grey shadows shadows running in panic and running like panicked animals one way and then another so I put just this piece and I actually to show it in Northern Ireland at the F.E. McWilliam Gallery came up and they wanted to show the piece and 2015 there still would be a time when showing that would still be quite controversial because it would you know it would rise many memories in people's minds and indeed my cousin's husbands had to leave the gallery anyway my friends came as well as some of my other friends and I felt very uncomfortable about it because I had to sort of cut them out of the history of the making of the work because he didn't appear to remember it and I didn't say much I wasn't able to talk to him that night but the next day I phoned and said thanks for coming to the show and he said Tim I walked into that room and I saw hell and it brought back this early childhood memory of being in a restaurant with my mother and we run out and looked up at the window and there's all these flames coming out pretty much close to where we sat and because I've got things so mixed up in my mind about him not remembering sort of these distorted thoughts of is he just trying to is he playing a trick on me or whatever so I said I need to see you straight away and we met in a pub the following hour and I didn't I just couldn't trust what he was saying until he drew it out and I said you must draw this out you must draw a diagram of this and point out where you were sitting and tell me more about this what you saw and felt and he sort of wondered why I was making him do this but he did it and then I said we were both there together and he couldn't remember me or my mother but all he could remember was the lunch and his mother and running with his mother and I think what an extraordinary thing to not remember such an event that I could remember until the moment he walked into that room and then this memory came to light in his mind it really fascinated me because when I told him about what I was going to make the look in his eye was it had gone dead it was a stair but it was a hollow stair and that's why I moved I didn't want to breach the subject I wanted to move on from that moment straight away I cut him out and then meeting him the next day or talking to him on the phone when he said I walked into that room and it was like walking into hell and then he said it reminds me I remember this thing that happened when I was a kid and I guess all you can say from that is that I guess the person that you're closest to your mother becomes the main thing that you remember that's your safety and everything else is excluded there we go Yes I wrote a piece once I never went raving or party in a dance party and I could have sworn the guy in the car next to me was this chap called Steve and when we hooked up years later having not seen each other for a while I said Steve you got to read this and I sent it to him and I was waiting for his response to be and he said now want me and then I remembered oh my god no it wasn't him was it it was another chap and people are funny my dad once said to me as an adult or obviously I was an adult he said yeah one time I was taking a cricket nets in he's talking about being at school right he said and yeah this pilot ejected from his plane his chute didn't open so he said I just heard it and he said I looked over and he just died on the ground next to me and I was like dad you didn't think to like mention that my whole life and what it was the school was next to a military and this pilot had taken off guess he had engine failure and didn't have enough altitude to turn around so he had to eject I think they call it a roman candle where you shoot twists up there's now so strange as folk that my whole life my dad never thought to mention probably a severely traumatic injury and then that led to me thinking bloody hell what must be going on in my dad's head in his own life for that to be insignificant I can sort of tell you there's probably quite a lot of other stuff going on that meant that that wasn't sort of a thing for him Well I guess time moves on and you bury things Chris I'm going to have to say I've got a meeting in three minutes I've got somebody turning up but I'm very happy to carry this on at another point Yes you must tell us after your installation you must come and tell us how it went and what the reception's like This is the, we're talking about the burning Yeah the man on fire Yeah I think that's a good point to also talk about the green man and that takes it on to another section so really happy to do that I'm sorry that I have to meet the filmmaker actually that's going to be recording it and he's due to arrive here in two minutes So I'm sorry to No don't be sorry at all thank you so much Tim for sharing your life and your career with us I'm just sat here finding it absolutely fascinating so thank you I'm sorry to bring that up at the end but the the early childhood experience I think it probably also feeds in to the man on fire thing I said earlier about what you don't see your mind and your imagination fills in what might or what could happen or might have happened or did happen and it's an interesting area I think that to deal with some modern Webster deals with things like that Tim you must get off, don't stay on the line I'm just going to thank everybody at home for tuning into this one much love to you all friends please look after yourself, if you could like and subscribe that would be wonderful and we will see you next time Thank you very much, same to you Chris Cheers Tim, take care, bye bye