Show notes
I have two guests on the podcast today, and they have made something extraordinary together.
The first drew queer Britain into being for sixty years and quietly refused to call any of its art. It paid the mortgage. It was cheaper than being a window cleaner. He published the world's first LGBTQ+ graphic novel in 1983, drew for Gay News, Capital Gay and The Guardian, made safer-sex campaigns through the AIDS crisis, and hung a nineteen-metre banner at Carrow Road for Justin Fashanu. All of which he called work - never art.
That guest is cartoonist David Shenton. The artist who finally insisted it was art is Ian Giles.
Together they have made Kindly Ease the Tension, David's first ever institutional retrospective. It begins with a small burnt doll, dressed in clothes knitted by a boy in a Lancashire terrace house and thrown into the fire by his father. The doll survived. So did the boy.
In this conversation we get into what happens when somebody finally calls your sixty years of work art. We talk about the Duvet of Love; an AIDS memorial David stitched in a bedsit that he never meant to be art. We talk about the trans baton being passed in a moment when many in the gay community have gone quiet. We talk about censorship and the rising conservatism in the arts, the works that have to be shown after hours, the double standard between classical nudity and queer images. And we talk about what intergenerational care actually looks like in practice.
David is seventy-seven and says this retrospective has stretched his horizon by another ten years. There is a lesson in that for all of us.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Some of the most important opportunities in your career won’t arrive through a formal application process. They happen because you care enough to ask the question, start the conversation, or create the thing you wish existed.
What feels awkward, unfashionable, or difficult in one chapter of your life may be exactly what gives your work its depth and originality later on - resist the temptation to self-censor.
BEST MOMENTS
“The work you make at your kitchen table, when nobody is watching, may turn out to be the archive of a generation. Keep going. Pass the baton when it is time.”
“I really wanted to live in a world where there was a David Shenton retrospective.”
RESOURCES
https://www.instagram.com/d.shenton
https://www.instagram.com/iangiles
https://www.museumscollections.norfolk.gov.uk/collections-object-page?id=NWHCM%20:%202016.221.1
HOST BIO
With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.
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