[The interview took place, after hours,  in the New Millennium Gallery, St Ives Thursday, 18 April 2002]
 

LU: David, you are the proprietor of The Millennium Gallery in St Ives...

I think it's only fair to you to put it on the record that you have already been interviewed by me; and that, except for the mike test, didn't record. It has to have been my fault and I want to thank you for being so patient and understanding as to submit to another, perhaps identical interview.

David, when and in what circumstances did you first meet Alaric Sumner.

DF: Well, as we are doing this interview again, I am able to answer a little more definitely, because I have been thinking about it and also you very kindly sent me copies of a couple of letters.

I am not absolutely sure about when and how we met; and, last time, my response was very much about my feeling that it was as if I'd always known him, or that there was no great dramatic occasion [when we met]. But, having had time to think about it, it does seem to me that, if we hadn't met Alaric before, certainly the main occasion was seeing his performance of Conversation in colour, and then Michael [Holloway] writing to Alaric.

Certainly, if we had met before, I don't think it was momentous; but, after that piece, we understood him more and where he was coming from; and we felt a special empathy with the subject. Michael, who was suffering from HIV and living with HIV, felt it pressed all the buttons, and that Alaric understood.

This special connection, if you like, led on to other things that he did with the gallery.

LU: To place it, you opened up in the 90s, around the time of Conversation in Colour?

DF: We opened in early '96.

LU: Conversation in colour was May 96. It was at the Tate St Ives; and, then, two days later, it went to Dartington.

DF: Well that is interesting, because we had only just come here permanently; and yet Alaric made a mark in our lives; and a year later Michael had died, when we were just about to put on the Sandra Blow show; and Alaric made a contribution to that in the form of a performance piece.

LU: Yes... Whenever I was in Penzance or St Ives, and I came largely to talk to Alaric, he would bring me here. Or tell me I had to come here if he was rushing off somewhere himself.

He'd been here since '91 and yet he spoke of here, this gallery, as a fixture. So it seems to me it was as if, retrospectively, he had been waiting for this place to open, just as retrospectively it was as if he had been waiting for the Tate to open.

DF: It's good to hear what you say about Alaric's enthusiasm. He came across to us as being very affirming about what we were doing. There was a sense of mutual affirmation, I think. We felt inspired by his work; and he felt positive about the sort of gallery we wanted to achieve. And that probably brought us together in terms of making a collaboration.

He felt he wanted to support us because he thought we were doing something serious and worthwhile; and in an area where it need it and there was so much tacky touristy sort of stuff.

LU: Yes, first of all, I think, he was just checking that I'd noticed you... I have a vague recollection that I had made some comment about the number of bad galleries here; and he had said "Ah, but have you been to the New Millennium Gallery"; and then he continued to make sure I kept up to date - even if I said that I wasn't so taken with a particular exhibition... What did I expect? he'd ask. What comes over in my memory is his message that this was a serious endeavour and must be supported. That's very strong.

So, you've told me the development of this connection with Conversation in colour when Michael [Holloway], your partner, wrote a review of it.⁽¹⁾

DF: Yes.

LU: And it was so positive that Alaric asked if he could dedicate the text to Michael.

DF: Michael was incredibly moved [by Conversation in colour]; and it came at a vital part of his dealing with his illness and dealing with his mortality, and awareness that he was on the way to another place. I felt moved by it, but Michael had that extra connection with it. That was expressed very acutely in the review, although the review was also a very good assessment of the piece.

LU: Did you see The Unspeakable Rooms? I don't think I asked last time.

DF: No.

LU: OK, I shan't ask you about it then! Let's move, may we, to the Sandra Blow exhibition in 97. Alaric was in contact with Sandra, through close friendship, already. He approached her and told her that he was writing in response to the paintings... I was surprised to find that he visited her in her studio; and she says herself she doesn't welcome that usually... He must have proposed the performance to her and then to you... May I put on a site-specific performance?

DF: I would imagine it went something like that; but the only thing I would say is that it would almost have been happening simultaneously. There was his energy and his excitement about the show. It wasn't just about the poems themselves, but the fact that it was going to be performed in the gallery within the space where the paintings actually are. So that people could look at the paintings and hear the words. I'm not sure of the sequence, but it all happened very quickly. And I think Alaric wrote the pieces very quickly; because I don't think he had much time to prepare. You may correct me...

LU: No, I don't know.

I had an image and I think it arose from something that he says about the length of time that the paintings needs - he says it in a poem that's a kind of epilogue to the piece:

 
The pace is a contradiction
that slips acquisition out of the question
requiring twenty minutes per canvas
few visitors afford the exhibition
more than a couple of minutes

LU:

 
others contemplate each image
for the hours they require

and, from that, I got the feeling that he had been in here, sitting, staring at the paintings at length, and writing... That's how it was?

DF: Yes, absolutely. I'm fairly sure that some of the poems happened after the show went up. I think he was still writing the piece. He came in and got the sense of energy of the work because he was still working on it. It was frenzied creativity. It felt very positive. Here was the work. It had just been finished. It had just been hung. And then here was someone who had that creativity to make sense of it verbally. That was amazing. I said to you in the last interview that it was totally fantastic that someone could make sense of what you felt when you looked at those paintings and put it into words. It was an amazing feat. I don't think Sandra could have articulated it; and she created it.

LU: Yes, with your help, I have now linked one of the poems to the appropriate reproduction of Sandra's image. The poem's not one of those that's particularly discursive about painterly method. But one can see that happening in others. Where he's not just being descriptive, but he's trying to engage with, not just what she's done physically, but to engage with what the creative making process itself was. Which is quite an extraordinary thing to attempt.

DF: Yes. And, when you look at her work, you feel emotional connection, whether it be links to nature or landscape or whatever. To be able to get that across as well, that feeling when you see them. He speaks of leaping into colour. And I do think that's what her work's about. When you look at it, you do feel you are leaping into something. As I say I don't think she would have been able to describe it herself.

LU: Yes, that is extraordinary. It seems to me as if different areas of the palette are speaking to each other... 

So, speedily written, but written in the presence of the paintings....

Since we spoke last, I have been looking at some letters he wrote Neil Canning, about their proposed collaboration., saying that he doesn't think it will work if he looks at the paintings and then goes away to write. He needs to be looking at them.

DF: That's quite interesting. It makes sense in terms of how he worked with Sandra. He knew her work very well. He had an intense empathy with it. So the work, on some level, had been done before, before he ever wrote. He had the insight, and he had collaborated with her before, in Waves on Porthmeor Beach, and that was working at speed. So the insight had come already in the visits leading up to the show; and finishing off after the show was up was possible.

Maybe, because perhaps he knew Neil's work less well, it needed a longer process and you couldn't just wait until the show was up and then do it. He needed a lot more studio visits and a lot more time building the personal relationship; because that's a lot to do with it, isn't it?

LU: Indeed.

DF: Having a sense of the artist.

LU: Yes. Also they were still talking about what they were actually trying to get out of the collaboration. Alaric was suggesting a bookwork - so that "getting away with it on the night" was just not in it, even if he could work quickly - Sandra speaks of her astonishment that, within a week, he gave her a pretty full critique of her Porthmeor drawings which would work both as literature and as art criticism.

DF: Yes, but if you asked Sandra how long it took her to make a painting, she could answer fifty years; because what you're doing when you buy anything or just look at anything an artist has made is getting everything they have given for that whole time. And I think there's something in those terms to be said of Alaric. The fact is that you are somehow taking everything that he has. And the energy comes, as it does with the painter, in making that final brushstroke. He's doing what the artist is doing.

LU: Yes, preparing all a life, even if the work itself didn't take all that long.

DF: And if Alaric had had to labour and labour over the poems, I don't think they would have the spontaneity that they do have. In a way they are a true reflection of the paintings - the spontaneity, the boldness, the taking risk - it's all there, isn't it!

LU: It is. I think the poem he wrote after the poems about the individual paintings, that I just read from, does shake a little in places. That's where he's putting a frame round the whole sequence. The greatest verve in the writing is when he is in front of the individual canvases. Changes made later tend to be made there, in that epilogue, not in the poems made urgently....

They were thinking of publishing a CD with the poems printed in the booklet; and I think it was for that one can see him thinking that, here and there, it didn't quite work; but, by and large, the writing in direct response to canvases is left. He might change spacing or positioning of words; but what's uttered doesn't alter.

DF: One would expect that, too, a difference between what is performed and what one actually puts into print to be read. It's appropriate that certain things would have to be changed.

It was an incredibly energetic evening. People were sitting around on floors. I don't think most people had experienced that, to sit in a gallery space where the performer was responding to what was on the wall. You could almost close your eyes at times, just hearing the words.

It would have been wonderful if it had been possible to do it again, with Neil Canning.

LU: Yes... But there is the prepared recording of this event and I am hoping we can get that into the public domain either on a CD or on the web in this feature. It was nice to hear it at the Tate, but they had it amped too low.

For the record, I am right, aren't I, that the event itself wasn't recorded? Or not that you know.

DF: Not that we know. If it was recorded, I haven't got the recording.... I looked for some photographs of Sandra's show, but I couldn't find any. I think it was that it coincided with Michael's death and things had to struggle through. 

I don't know everyone who was here. If someone did it, they may announce it when they read this.

LU: I hope so.

Thank you for that. And thank you once again for being interviewed twice.

DF: Not at all. I think that was just as valuable as the first would have been.

LU: Yes, I think so. We may have said some slightly different things each time, but that doesn't matter; we covered much the same ground. Thank you again.
 
 

Footnote 1: The text of Michael Holloway's review is at Appendix A to this interview 
 
 
 
 
 Conversation in colour by Alaric Sumner

A performance at Tate St Ives 14 May 96

It would be too easy to pigeonhole this performance as yet another example of red ribbon theatre, but such a labelling would be simplistic. The minimalism of the work - repetitive phrases spoken almost hypnotically by the two male performers - is the more powerful for its sparsity of dialogue and elevates the work out of its immediate setting (the return of a man to visit his lover dying of AIDS) into the higher plane of the universality of suffering and the inadequacy of human speech to convey even the simplest messages at times.

The two performers manage to convey such an intensity of emotion to the audience, but what they manage to communicate to each other is less certain. The hesitancy and awkwardness between the two lovers is beautifully and painfully presented: I want to say this. Dare I say this? Will he understand me if I do? Have I already said too much? Much of human conversation is superficial, barren and worthless. We pussyfoot around issues of real importance and end up prattling inconsequences. The mounting tension of this piece is built on the antithesis of this - sparse words of rich intensity reflected in continuous references to colour, taking the audience through a spectrum of human emotion and frailty.

The interludes of Michael Finnissy piano music provided through two tape recorders opposed on each side of the stage, give a welcome relief from the pain of the attempted communication between the two performers. Perhaps the haunting piano conveys more than words ever can. The comparison between the limited possibility of dialogue between two tape recorders and the difficulty of communication between the two human performers is an interesting theme of the piece.

On a personal level, I was moved by the work's frank acceptance of the reality of terminal illness. There is nothing commendable about the British tendency to sweep death under the carpet. Related to this is the banality which often attends visits to a sickroom. Whatever visitors come out with is often mawkish and inappropriate: the best intentions often misfire. This piece highlights the difficulty of saying the right thing at the right time. In particular, what is the most appropriate thing to say to someone on their sickbed, who looks awful, is feeling awful and has little chance of recovery.

The seeming impossibility of saying the right thing is presented with painful intensity. The two performers communicate with the audience much more effectively than with each other. In the end, as with so much failed human communication, words fall redundant. The complex issues surrounding illness and death are so difficult to encompass in words that in the end only the simplest statements have any relevance. In this case, it is the powerful simplicity "I love you", which cries out to be said, but is buried in the tomb of hesitancy and pent up emotion. In the end it bursts out and is said. But the difficulties and impossibilities remain...