DKUK
Conversations in front of and about art
DKUK
Daniel Kelly and Catherine Ince: How to Make Intriguing Ideas for Everyone, Recorded Live During a Haircut
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A conversation about accessibility, design history and what it means to bring intriguing ideas to everyone, recorded live during a real haircut at DKUK, Peckham's mirrorless salon where art replaces mirrors.
In this episode, Daniel Kelly sits down with Catherine Ince, curator, design historian, and research fellow working with the Eames estate in Los Angeles. Catherine is also a PhD researcher at the Royal College of Art, where she has stepped back from institutional life to go deep on a subject she loves.
Catherine grew up in Hackney. She went on to build a career in museums, though she often felt like an outsider in that world. She was later commissioned to help create V&A East in Stratford, a new kind of museum right on the doorstep of where she grew up.
We talk about what it really means to make intriguing ideas accessible, not simplified, just genuinely open. About Twin Peaks, and how challenging work can find a massive audience through the right door. About stepping back from a big career to breathe, think, and follow your own curiosity. And about what it feels like to be in the room while something is being made.
Recorded in one continuous take, with the ambient sound of scissors throughout. If you enjoy slow, thoughtful conversation, this one is for you. Best enjoyed with headphones.
Welcome to Peckham, welcome to DKUK, and welcome to the podcast channel. After much demand, we've finally put our podcast on YouTube so you can actually watch the haircut take place as well as listening to an interesting conversation. Today I've got a fascinating guest, Catherine Inns. I've been cutting Catherine's hair for a long time and we've had many conversations. Catherine and I both share a love for wanting to make interesting ideas for everyone to see. We believe that art should have placed in the mainstream as well as in the galleries. So the conversation went in a lot of interesting ways. Something that really struck with me was what Catherine said about feeling like an outsider when she first started working in museums. Something that I can really relate to when I first moved to London. Now the biggest project that Catherine just finished working on is the BA East Storehouse. She grew up in Hackney and then on the edge of her neighbourhood, she's ended up building a completely new model of what a museum can be. It's a really heartwarming story, and if you've not been to the museum, I really urge you to go. Catherine's now a research fellow at Eames, taking a breather away from institutional life. Alright, let's go and join the haircut and see what Catherine's got to say. Hello, Catherine.
SPEAKER_02Hello.
SPEAKER_00So what are we gonna do with your hair today?
SPEAKER_02Uh well, it's gotten big. Yeah. And you know, a bit sort of like irregular, so it just needs a tidy in the usual style.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02No? The way you've done it the last couple of times, like cutting in here is nice.
SPEAKER_00So not too much of a change. No. No. Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_02I'm at this point in my life a creature of habit. Yeah, I can appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00And we found a haircut that works for you. You have. We have. And if I remember rightly, we have been layering it a little bit more.
SPEAKER_02So the last few iterations sits nicely here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because it can grow out a bit heavy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it gets very heavy through here. And yeah, like you I end up looking like my dog who's a coffee.
SPEAKER_00You're wearing it curly all the all the time? Yeah. And how do you dry it?
SPEAKER_02Use I use a Dyson hairdryer with a um diffuser, and then sometimes I do the air wrap thing.
SPEAKER_00Oh perfect. Okay, cool.
unknownI don't know.
SPEAKER_00You're happy with the response.
SPEAKER_02So basically I'll just tip my head upside down and there's no skill involved in the way I dry my hair.
SPEAKER_00Any products involved?
SPEAKER_02Uh yeah, I've got the Divines, is that how you say it? Divine's Daviness. Daviness. Daviness. Um curl cream. I've got some leave-in conditioner. Which is another Daviness, I think. That's about it, and I don't use that all the time. It's a bit dry, I think I need a new hydrating shampoo. Yeah, because I'm perimenopausal, so every week you find a new symptom of you know dryness. I've got quite itchy scalp, so getting products to suit kind of what's happening with your hair at different times in your life is so the menopause made your hair go a bit drier.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And it there's a weird thing, like I've got really itchy ears.
SPEAKER_00Oh.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's weird.
SPEAKER_02Totally. But I'm I'm not alone apparently.
SPEAKER_00There's there's not much known about it, is there?
SPEAKER_02No, not enough. No, enough. Not for not for those sorts of you know, little symptoms. I suppose the main ones are more and more covered. But yeah, you find your the the makeup of your hair changes a bit as you get older.
SPEAKER_00Any other symptoms with the hair?
SPEAKER_02Um no, just it just feels dry and a bit kind of wiry. So that's why I've always tried to use hydrating shampoos and the curl cream helps give it a nice of silkiness, I suppose. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because your hair is reasonably thick and wavy. And there's a lot of it. There's a lot of it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean it's falling out as well. But my uh my mum was hilarious. She said to me yesterday, she was like, Well, well, you've got enough. You can you don't need to worry about it. And I was like, Yeah, but still it's a bit disconcerting when you're having a shower.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um so yeah, the curl the which curl cream is it that you're you you're you're using? Is it the white one?
SPEAKER_02No, like a silvery grey bottle. Gold bottle. Gold bottle, gold, not silver or grey.
SPEAKER_00Did you say you're putting something on before then, like a leave-in conditioner?
SPEAKER_02Sometimes.
SPEAKER_00Sometimes. So that might be worth thinking about. When you're doing the curly hair, they say cream gel oil. So shampoo, shampoo conditioner first, then towel dry, and then cream is like a moisturizer, so a leave-in conditioner, then the gel, and then the oil to go on afterwards once it's dry. So the cream sort of locks in the moisture into the hair, and then the gel would be for the hold and the shape, and then the oil. Generally, I like to say that's just for things in it where it's gone a bit too fluffy. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe a leave it conditioned like hell with a bit of extra moisture. Um, shall I put a treatment on it for you while you're here to help? Sure. Give it a little boost of some extra moisture there. Yeah, you it's tough for you because, like I said, your hair's reasonably thick, it is wavy, so thicker, wavy hair needs more moisture because it can't get the moisture from your scalp. Basically, the scalp produces the oils, and when the hair's curlier, it's harder for it to travel down the hair shaft. So if it's fine and straight, that's why it's still requiring that increase. And we've got colour in there as well, haven't we, which can also work to dry it out. So you're doing the right thing with a good shampoo conditioner, um, curl shampoo conditioner or moisture a moisture-rich one, and also maybe one a conditioner with a bit of protein in it as well to help for the strength because the colour can sort of uh attack the protein in it, and then once you've got the hair in really good condition, it will dry a lot easier. Yeah, so the only thing sort of we'll do a treatment which will help boost the moisture levels today. Uh the only thing missing would be like a moisturizer, leave-in conditioner, sort of thing, I would say, and you can use them both with the curl creams. Okay. Um, so we will use one of those today as well, see how it feels and dry really natural. Um, yeah, I think you're doing everything right, putting the curl cream on, just do you give it a like a scrunch when you put it in? Yeah, like a scrunch, gets a little bit of the water out first and head upside down, is really easy, effective way of just getting a bit of volume in the hair. Um, because the we we're cutting the layers in through the top, which are a bit shorter, that makes it a bit easier to get a bit of volume and lift and just like general shape. And then we've been graduating the back, which I think, even though it's been a couple of months, I think so. The shape is still quite nice in the back, isn't it? It doesn't grow out too.
SPEAKER_02I think that's what those layers do, it retains its shape quite well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so it's a mixture of graduation and layers. So graduation is when you pull the hair out of the sides, and then layers is what you do the top, and so because we've mixed those two together, it just balances really nice for like wavy curly hair. It looks like a bob. It's the shape of a bob on straight hair, you know. Uh whereas if we just cut it like a normal bob, it would end up being quite a triangular shape.
SPEAKER_02I'd be even more like a Spaniard, even more like your dog, yeah. I mean, he's a handsome creature, so you know it's not so bad.
SPEAKER_00And then it's just getting that balance so we still keep the line here, but we've got that softness in the layers, um, and then just as we're cutting the graduation, we've cut with the point of the scissors, so we have a bit of separation and movement in the hair. And yeah, maintenance-wise, it two to three months is about right for looking after the a shape like this, when which is I would say about when you're coming back, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Two to three months is about right. So four four or five haircuts a year is a good rotation. Uh perfect, all right. Um, so we're gonna be taking about just under an inch off the length. Yeah, keeping the same shape as it is, um, refreshing all the weight out of the back and keeping the layers fairly heavy through um fairly short through the front, so knock out all that weight so that that will solve that problem of it where it has through the front and the back. Does that sound okay?
SPEAKER_02Sounds great.
SPEAKER_00Any other questions? No. All right, follow me, we're gonna get it shampooed.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_02You're gonna shampoo me with these on?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Wow. It's absolutely okay. Thank you for agreeing to do this, Catherine.
SPEAKER_03My pleasure.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna start off by asking you what was your earliest memory of your engagement with something creative art and why it's possible?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this is a really good question. Um I think I think there's two sort of things that come to my mind. One is that my my mum loves music, so there was always sort of music in the house, you know, we had a record player and um she would she loved everything from Elvis and the Beatles to Billy Holiday, and um so that was always something that I've sort of felt I discovered and appreciated quite young. Um she was always very interested in art as well, um but my parents were divorced when I was quite young, so she and she was working really hard, so it was it didn't feel like it was a sort of household where you kind of sat around and chatted about art or went off here, there and everywhere all the time. But um certainly we went to the local museum near us where I grew up in Hackney, which is the Jeffrey Museum, which is sort of in it's now called the Museum of the Home, and was where you kind of went to look at period rooms and interior design of kind of probably sort of just like average middle class homes through the ages. I love that going and discovering all these objects of kind of domestic life. But the the most kind of specific experience I think was when I was I was at primary school and I was trying to remember whether I was seven or eight probably, and we went on a class trip to um to the National Gallery, and I remember just standing in front of the sunflowers by Van Gogh and thinking, holy shit, I love this. I don't know why I loved it, maybe I like the thickness of the paint or something, or the colours, or just the abstraction, and they would, you know, they showed us one of Monet's whatever you know, paintings from the garden at Juvenile that they've got at the gallery, and you started to see sort of you know abstraction and coming up close felt very different from standing further away and things coming into focus. So that was very that was a very pivotal experience, I think.
SPEAKER_00So it sounds like it was very much to do with the physical presence of the city. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, just felt awesome.
SPEAKER_00That's cool, and very young age, right?
SPEAKER_02So I liked I liked drawing and painting and making stuff. I was always making things, you know. If I get toys, I'd make things out of the boxes that they came in, and so it was always very I was busy in that sense with those kind of activities.
SPEAKER_00And did that lead you to do arts with GCSEs and things?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah, and design. Um and my design teacher, design and technology teacher was amazing. I went to a quite a strict Catholic convent girls' school, just a state school. Um, but very, you know, kind of uh yeah, nuns who had very strict policies on how you behaved inside, outside the classroom, outside the school. Different shoes for inside, different shoes for outside, and um and Miss Wilson, Heather Wilson, was um was quite liberal, quite bohemian. I'm still in touch with her actually, Ron.
SPEAKER_03So nice.
SPEAKER_02She was so cool, and she had this son called Titus, and it was like, you know, I didn't know anybody called Titus. It was she was so interesting. Yeah, and we my friend Joe and I did um GCSE design technology, yeah, and this was in the very early 90s, I guess. And um it was when Twin Peaks was first broadcast on BBC TV and Twit Twin Peaks was broadcast 1989 that was. Was it fuck? Okay, so this was the late 80s. Twin Peaks was broadcast on a Tuesday, and our lessons were on a Wednesday. So we would go to class and Miss Wilson would set everybody some things to do, and then Joe and her and and I would sit down with Miss Wilson and talk about the night's episode. What happened?
SPEAKER_03What was it? What do you think?
SPEAKER_00Stay up with my dad and watch it.
SPEAKER_01That's really young.
SPEAKER_00Eight. Yeah, watching it. I remember the sheer terror of like Bob climbing out of the TV or climbing on the no climbing along the floor towards the camera, and it still brings me shudders down my spot. And um yeah, not an easy relationship with my dad, but I I'm not sure if that makes me like him a bit more or a bit less. Yeah, I can't quite decide.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. No, I used to I used to kick my mum and my brother out of the front room. I wouldn't let them watch it because it would just talk over it or interrupt or something. I was just like, no, this is my time.
SPEAKER_00But it was a quite like a big thing.
SPEAKER_02Nine o'clock BBC Two. Yeah, it was just like unbelievable. I'd never seen anything like it. My dad had quite liked Dennis Potter, so we'd watched a bit of Dennis Potter. So there was I have memories of you know the singing detective and and whatever. Um and I don't know, you know, like I know well, some people are quite snotty about TV, but um there've been some remarkable programmes that have just like changed your like like Potter or David Lynch, you know, just changed the way you think about everything. Um that's what Twin Peaks was was for me. Yeah, you know, I think it didn't matter.
SPEAKER_00You know, there'd not been anything quite just the weirdness of extreme and weird and stuff. Um what I very very clearly remember even being very young is how omnipresent it was. Just everywhere, you know, so you see stickers, who killed Laura Palmer Bob the stickers, and you know, this was in Buxton, you know, in a little town in Derbyshire, like it was it was a mainstream event, right?
SPEAKER_02Mainstream but still cult though, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, they produced a little um like they they issued a book of the diaries of Laura Palmer, and then they had this guide to Twin Peaks as well. I remember getting. Um yeah. My friend of mine who I met at university um is was, I don't know if he still is, but he was the chair of the Twin Peaks Society in the UK. And he brought loads of cast members over for talks and stuff. Miss Wilson encouraged me to study art history, which wasn't offered at my school, so I moved to a different school when I did my A levels.
SPEAKER_00Really?
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00Specifically to study art history. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I went to a the Camden Consortium, so um group, the secondary state schools in Camden. So it was offered at Camden School for Girls, which was quite sort of it was a state school, but quite shishy. It was the first time I'd met anybody from private school. Um but it was cool. Yeah, and that's how I sort of ended up doing what I do.
SPEAKER_00And then that took you to university?
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00And where did you go to university?
SPEAKER_02I went to university in Sheffield, first of all.
SPEAKER_00Very cool.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And it was a really good um I got offers at different places, and including like UEA and Sussex, where there's good art history courses, but they're off-city campus kind of universities, and I think I decided I wanted to be in a city, and then at the time this particular course was history of art design and film, and it it was quite unique. It was only offered in Sheffield and I think Newcastle. And in Sheffield, the the the like the faculty faculty were quite interesting, a lot of them were you know connected with um Griselda Pollock in Leeds, so quite a lot of feminist historians and Marxist historians, so it wasn't a sort of traditional art history subject. Um, you got a kind of an initial grounding in you know long art history, but you really started in a sort of you know industrial revolution forward.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_02Which is good for me, as somebody mostly interested in sort of 20th century art and design.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because it and that was uh was that Sheffield University?
SPEAKER_02Yes, so Sheffield, not Hallam. No, stu yeah, not Sheffield University, Sheffield Hall. Oh, it was at Sheffield Hall. Yeah, which was the Polytechnic. And when I was there in the sort of mid to late 90s, it was at the Salter Lane campus, which is where the art school was. They don't have the art school like there anymore in a building, so it was completely separate from the rest of the university, and as fine arts students, you know, studying sculpture and painting, um they had different types of um combined, you know, media degrees as well, for people who wanted to make sort of film and photography but th more through as a more kind of you know visual arts um practitioner perspective, but they also had a great film course, so we that's where I did my sort of film film history. Um as part of the course, as part of my course, but you got to meet lots of filmmakers, you know, and they were making you know short films. Yeah, um I was in a couple of short films for for my friends that was fun and mostly boring.
SPEAKER_00Um because they're not always combined like that are history courses, are they? They can be often uh No, and and it's quite interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like and um it was a great place to be. Like it was all there's always just something interesting going on. There are a lot of 3D design courses as well. like furniture and products and industrial design. And um it was really good as an art historian to be part of that that community because you know art history is so sort of I don't know, it's just a lot of beige girls who collect teapots and things like that. And not to be dismissive but yeah it's quite sort of a posh subject I suppose. And it can have a reputation as something for people that don't know what they want to study as well right really Yeah okay I'll take that yeah I mean I I I had my I had great friends on the course and I think because of that sort of the the s slightly politicized tone of the academic kind of community there really made it interesting um and you know quite different from your experience if you'd gone to you know St Andrews or something like that. And it's a very well we've spoken about this before but Sheffield is a great very bohemian city in general with a very good independent art scene and music and film as well right yeah yeah definitely good history of of of a mixture of all of those I yeah yeah yeah and it was really palpable at at the you know the the art school at the as that sort of community at the centre of it all it felt it feels it felt completely different to how um that university experience is now a lot of the subjects have changed or gone and war warp records was around at that was that time so that's right yeah that was warp actually had you know had their shop um was that on Devonshire Street Division Street Division Street yeah yeah um yeah there were great club nights uh loads of you know and people stuck around after fin graduating as well I stayed in Sheffield for several years and well we think our paths may have crossed yes they did somehow you just don't remember I don't remember I was too young and scared because I you you were at Halo the hairdressers the hairdressers job in a hair salon and I at that point I'd finished university and I was working in a bar across the road from Halo and I lived with one of your colleagues we shared a house Ashley and uh Richard who was part of the hairdressing community I think at this point he'd gone to Tony and Guy I l I was just like you know I don't care just do whatever you want so they used to just ask me to model and Richard asked me to model for him when he was doing his sort of progression examination thing at Tony and Guy or whatever. And there was some big show and he cut my did I have I told you this story he cut my hair like Filoki on the human leaf so I had this like shaved one side and we're like he put extensions in so the other side came around like this beautiful Bob he dyed my hair like an indigo blue it was very blue black it was very beautiful and my hair I wore my hair really short at the time like pixie crop short and um and then I was in the bar and Philoki came in because he used to come in for a drink and I was like and he didn't have hair like that no he didn't have hair like that but like you know I was definitely I don't think I was a bit mortified but he's very quiet so he didn't say anything I just sort of scuttled off yeah so that was um I remember you you had you had black hair did you have did you dye your hair black or are you black are you black haired naturally no it was dyed yeah yeah yeah you were so tall and skinny with your black hair that's what I remember oh funny well sorry I've just dropped my thing in that side yeah yeah so how long did you stay in Sheffield for then after uni um three or four years yeah yeah and it was great because it um it gave me I ended up managing you know one of the bars an independent bar and it meant I could do funny things like we did collaborations with the some of the galleries and museums in the city centre to host sort of resident artists I sat on a the public art commissioning board for the city council when they had like public art officers and we can developed like did an open call for artists to develop a project for Devonshire Green we worked with um Gavin Wade who's now Birmingham at Eastside projects and you know so it was a way for me to sort of think about have the time and the space and the opportunity to sort of think about what I wanted to do. You know whether I wanted to go into I didn't really want to go into academia but like what side of curating museum and gallery work. So it sort of gave me a bit of a flavour of all of those things. I did some volunteering at the design centre in Barnsley and because I was working at night I could do sort of things in the daytime. And then I thought you know I need to I probably need to be based in London if I want to be more connected to um the contemporary design and architecture scene and um you know positions in Sheffield were few and far between so I decided to do an MA and that back in London and and that gave me again the time and the space to just sort of reconnect with people and make some contacts and because just in case people missed it you'd grown up in London. Oh yes yes I had grown up in yeah hackney girl now living south come back I used to come to Peckham a lot because I had an aunt that lived here or great aunt and so you came back back south um and did an MA where was the MA at Kingston at Kingston and was curating curating yeah that was quite early yeah yeah it was the second year of our course and the only other kind of main course was um was at uh the Royal College of Art and this wasn't been going for very long they were they were very new by then those courses yeah we um I was a second covort but it was good because it was it was it was focused also on on design history so it was positioned very differently to a kind of again another classical sort of art art curating course yeah in partnership with the design museum and that meant that you you had both the sort of history and theory academic side as well as the sort of reality of you know projects that and teaching that happened in the museum. Yeah. So you quickly got to you know exploring it as a practice rather than as an abstract sort of theoretical thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah so it was it was cool it was again another place to meet super interesting people but I think a good lesson there is you didn't go straight into it right I think that's really important for people to think about what you said there about just giving yourself time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah definitely I mean there were some personal reasons for that too but I find now that more and more people young people are on a kind of crazy treadmill of just like just you know get all the qualifications and that and that's fair enough but it means that sometimes like as as you know in my career I've been in a position to employ people and you get PhDs who've never had a job coming for a job and it's like don't underestimate what work experience offers you even if it's not directly related to what you want to do. It just makes you understand the world and see the world differently gives you you know extraordinary experience in you know in communication and personal interaction and the different skills needed. Yeah. Um so I've I always sort of encourage people to reflect on that a bit um you know unless you want to go into academia or something but see I'd done hairdressing when I was 18 which is either fairly hard you know hard work hard partying all rolled into one so by the time I came to university at age 22 I could go out and have a drink go to the party and then get up and go to university.
SPEAKER_00And be disciplined yeah you had to because you know that's what we did as a as a hairdresser you got to so why did you do that then?
SPEAKER_02Why did you what did you study at university?
SPEAKER_00Painting fine painting after hairdressing yeah why didn't I know that so I was still young enough to like have a lot of fun but um and be open to everything. But you know I'd I'd I'd had a career before so uh before looking and thinking about art had been you know something I only had time to do on the weekend. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah so um I think it's it's really good. It's really good to I've had artist friends who did something completely different as as an undergrad and then kind of went oh I think I would really like to do art and went back and and did it. And um I don't know I mean if you if you want to become a practitioner um an art you know an artist um do you need a do you need a postgraduate qualification? I don't know I find that the friends of mine that have done um an MA you know they probably probably were like me they they had some distance they were trying to make things work and then decided that they were the at the right point where they wanted um that level of engagement with you know a course the people teaching on the course time and space to develop their practice so it's a very individual yeah kind of you know um I think it's good to not just think it's the only way isn't it yeah definitely and I think now with with the the the fees associated with um education and you know that not necessarily the the the job market chain having changed radically I think a lot of people are thinking about like whether they bother with university altogether which I think is super interesting and more definitely I mean bring on some apprenticeships right you know skills based learning you know yeah things like that in yeah there are oh there yeah that's so good yeah sort of renaissance model isn't it yeah yeah yeah definitely um and also you know there's so many different facets to the world that I work in um you know museums of all different type um gazillion roles within museums then you've got contemporary commercial galleries other types of not for profit sort of public arts organisations so the you know and it could be curating but also you might be more motivated by working in a you know collections management role or a interpretation engagement role or learning role or a social media marketing you know there's there's tech technical services like at the bigger museums you know for example at the VNA where I work that you know there's this there's a huge team of technicians who handle and move art and care for it and prepare you know install for exhibitions um and that's there's also apprenticeships that are offered in those um divisions of the museum and you know they're amazing they make all these beautiful mounts for objects they're sort of a deep material and um physical kind of knowledge of of um art and um artifact that transitions nicely to your first job then you went straight over to the VA after university was that right after you were me yeah kind of I did I was working freelance for about a year and I was working um within the design and architecture department of the British Council um supporting one of the curators there on the producing the Venice Bienale of architecture they didn't have a permanent role at that time it was sort of more of a sort of you know contract position which is also another thing that people have to do like take short term contracts and stuff and this was with the British Council. Yeah straight after UD Yeah yeah and I'd met the person I worked for through my course I see and um and I also did I did a bit of kind of curatorial work for sulfurges when they were doing their big kind of you know sort of curated thematic kind of um takeovers in the in the store I worked for a graphic designer called Morag Marskov doing like prep for shoots and things um so it was quite varied and then a job came up at the at the VA as a curator within the contemporary team as it was called then it's now become a sort of collecting department and so I applied for that and I got that and um it's doing a variety of things from like overseeing um contemporary focused exhibitions um to you know the very nascent sort of early years of the Friday late programme that they run which is you know still still going still brilliant um lots of lots of different sort of things and and I think I just felt quite intimidated as somebody sort of working class with a certain type of education going into this very rarefied establishment institution that was huge and I didn't want to be the type of collections curator that is most common in settings like that. I didn't want to be a specialist in you know X, Y, Z.
SPEAKER_00Why did you feel intimidated? Because people were from different around people from more different backgrounds.
SPEAKER_02Yeah yeah um posture and you know there's a sort of there's a c it's a closed loop sort of world sometimes that's where you can feel certain university or certain pathways. Yeah and had and even had a certain type of sort of secondary education where there's just a sort of you know different kind of literacy and social confidence and you know and in part it was me as well feeling um you know that typical sort of imposter syndrome or not quite right. I think also maybe I just you know I was quite young and how old are you not in a relationship do you know how old was I 26 27 something like that and and I I think I just wanted to be a in a role that was a bit more dynamic although the team that I was in was really fantastic you know full of great people like Sean Cole and Lauren Parker and Louise Shannon and the great curators who have all gone on to do you know interesting things. So I felt very comfortable within that sphere but I don't know maybe I was a bit impatient as well so I stayed there about a year and um I hadn't planned to leave but the my previous boss at the British council called me up and said I've now got a permanent position come back and work for me permanently so I was like oh okay then so I mean I had to apply but um yeah but that you know at the time it was a cultural relations organization that felt felt very it like felt like a great opportunity to work internationally there were experts in all the countries where the British Council had offices who were you know they were experts in the sort of art and art and culture of that place so I did work in Mexico and Venezuela and Japan.
SPEAKER_00If I'm understanding correctly the British Council's job is to promote UK British culture through art. Is that right?
SPEAKER_02Yes I suppose it was it was founded in the interwar period to to better relations between Britain and the rest of the world it has I mean it's you know when I was there it was there was sort of different divisions there was sort there was a sciences area an arts division teaching English was a big and offering English qualifications was also a big part of the kind of operation so that was a whole division but yeah the the team that I worked with in and the arts team had specialists in literature in in visual arts in design and architecture in performance performing arts um music creative industries so there are all these like brilliant specialists who would basically work with colleagues overseas to make a program of events activities touring exhibitions exchanges between practitioners supporting the development of new work showcasing international work here in the UK at different festivals like the Edinburgh festival for example a lot of the artists who are 10 years above me the generation above me you know who I was I was working for as assistant when I was first moved to London in 2008 four, five six many of them said the British Council had given them their first grant grant or big exhibition or you know really been very instrumental in in their careers yeah so yeah so they offered the very good role or international show right? Yeah they definitely it was a way to kind of support the artist ecology the British council was it also has a collection like the government art collection or the arts council collection so well established that it was an opportunity to collect art to support artists in that way. Tracy Emman for example talks a lot about the British Council giving her a travel grant uh very early on in her career which enabled her to go and you know visit certain places or show abroad and and these you know they're quite modest in the grand scheme of things but they are massive injections and it was that's about timing for artists isn't it yeah whether they're in retirement can be exactly and it's also it was also I mean I think it's changed a lot now and doesn't do anything nearly as interesting as it as it used to um in the widest sort of sense. Probably two funding codes I would imagine rather than well but also you know these kind of organisations they get a sort of bee in their bonnet about something and and the you know leadership starts to interfere and suddenly all of the the work became a bit more abstracted and I don't know like just less interesting and less of an opportunity to support practitioners at a certain sort of moment in time. They also decimated the arts specialists around the world in favour of sort of generic project manager posts and I think that was really a mistake because it meant that the the colleagues in different countries in different cities whom you would shape a program or an exhibition with you know they weren't there anymore and that knowledge had walked out the door and so just I don't know it all felt like it sort of degenerated into a kind of rubbish Ted talk type situation but anyway maybe cut that bit out but I think by the time I came to of you know it would have been useful for me there wasn't much left yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean of course the the the the money side of things is always gonna be a challenge too but um what was I gonna say but I did I you know I had an amazing opportunity to work in in some incredible places and travel extensively and then there was a point at which you know it was like right we need to do something else now and that's when I moved to the Barbican fantastic and were you what was your role there I was a curator within the um galleries team so there's two galleries at the Barbican um the curve and the main the main space and I was brought in to kind of compliment curators who were focused on visual arts and I came from a design and architecture perspective. Did you apply for that job or was that I did of course you do you were plucked no I applied for it and made my way through like everybody else yeah it was good and what what the highlights from the barbecue Barbican years um many you know it was a small team you had to do everything so it's like great opportunity you're like the curating the same space over again gives you an opportunity to sort of test ideas and and grow you should give some background on the barbicon in case anybody watching all right the barbican is an an estate that was you you give quick can you give me a quick two-minute the Barbican is an estate in the city of London like in the city city of London um it was an area that was heavily bombed in the Second World War and so they developed um it's a new you know quite um no I wouldn't call it sort of affordable social housing it's public housing at the time but but pretty pretty swish um designed by Chamberlain Powell and Bonn architects very sort of unique expression of British brutalism um streets in the sky and kind of you know every cars are all sort of on roads um tunnels going underneath the buildings and um uh different but I can't I just can't remember how many residences there are it's all apartment living in three towers and and then some low-level blocks and at the centre of it um right opposite um St. Paul's um girls school is um an art centre a multiform art centre and that was the last thing to open um and the building construction took many many many years um and the art centre gosh did it open in 1984 I think it was 1984 um anyway it's got a concert hall which is the home to the London Symphony Orchestra it's got a theatre um that's often where the Royal Shakespeare company present productions outside of Stratford um they commission theatre they commission dance they commission um you know have classical music programs contemporary music programs it's got a suite of cinemas great um you know like celluloid film projection facilities and then these two galleries public library so it's really it's really a brilliant space in terms of its multi-art form kind of focus um and a really you know enjoyable place to visit with the sort of foyers and the the um gardens and lake in the middle thank you that was a brilliant introduction to the barbecue so I I did a you know it was a small team I did um big survey exhibitions sort of back to back the largest scale projects I'd ever done so it was a great another great opportunity for me. The first show I did was kind of in train um so I just sort of took it over to deliver it was an exhibition called Future Beauty 30 years of Japanese fashion about um fashion uh from Japan um in the kind of you know Western international couture system I suppose um did you have a background in clothes no but I've always very interested in fashion and I suppose you know partly I wouldn't call myself a fashion curator but the world of kind of you know design history encompasses some of some of that too. It was a collaboration with the Kyoto Costume Institute who have this amazing collection of Western European dress and contemporary Japanese fashion with some eight eight sort of protagonist designers like Yoji Yamamoto, Reikaoku and Semiyaki Jun Takahashi and some you know some works borrowed from those houses specifically and it was a beautiful exhibition everything was just you know they're phenomenal the team there of conservators and mounters and curators and the work is so sculptural and so conceptual so it really you know really amazing to look at um and we worked with an architect called Su Fujimoto on the exhibition design and while I was sort of delivering that I was also developing my first sort of show that I did um that was you know produced by the Barbican um it was so huge in scope it was about the Bauhaus art school and German art school um so my colleague Lydia Yee when she finished um the show that she was working on kind of you know we collaborated together to deliver it with with both with the assistant curators to support because it was so humongous like such an immense amount of history and work to to you know investigate and research but then also just like the loans of hundreds of different um works from across you know across the world so there's a lot of coordination so that was a that was another huge undertaking and we got we got a grant very quite late on in the project because we weren't going to do a catalogue necessarily um and we got a grant to do a book so that was all kind of crazy crazy busy. So you're always in these cycles of sort of developing a show delivering one and then you know kind of keep moving forward like that so yeah um and then the biggest kind of piece of independent research that I did there was a project about the work of Charles and Ray Eames in the Eames office like the Bauhaus you know there hadn't been really a full a full scale survey of the Bauhaus in the UK for a long time. There'd been an Eames show about 20 years before but there was still you know lack of understanding of the full range and breadth of their practice people still sort of say still say to me now oh the people who design chairs they're like yes but also all this other stuff so you know the the task I suppose is always to like you know how could you make these historic subjects feel relevant for our time how can you unfold you know creative practice in a way that feels um you know dynamic and interesting for now not just a sort of historic survey what we did with the Bauhaus is really try to sort of lean into what it felt like you know and how it had been documented as a as an art school experience with all of that sort of experimentation. So we showed a lot of work by students who are unknown and and balance you know pulled back on the kind of presentation of works by key teachers like Kandinsky or Clay which are important but also you know their teaching was what it was really trying to um explore and the cult the culture of the school in that sense. Yeah no it was it was amazing yeah what a privilege and then the Eanes exhibition I opened in October 2015 and that summer I'd been approached to think to asked to invite you know I was invited to go um apply for a job back at the VA working on VNA East so I gave that some thought and I wasn't really looking to leave the barbecue because I loved it and I loved working with everybody there in the immediate art art team and then you know programmers and curators in different art forms were always like really collegiate always happy to like you know we did an Eames film day in the cinema Lydia had done this great show about Robert Rauschenberg Jasper Johns John Cage and Lars Cunningham you know there were all sorts of events that happened in the theatre as well as the gallery space so you could really cross all these boundaries but the innate East represented a kind of you know chance to scale up my curatorial thinking and conceive a new museum and in the place in London where I was born and grew up so it was sort of you couldn't really say no. I mean obviously um I had to apply again and I I got the job so that was nice.
SPEAKER_00Well you know you were talking about your earliest experience of art being at the Jeffrey Museum right? A museum in East London.
SPEAKER_02Yeah yeah so that is yeah and of course the m the VNA has the museum of childhood or what it what was called the museum of childhood. Yeah um the young VA in now in Bethnel Green so was that around when you were a child it was it's actually the Bethnal Green Museum has been there since the late 19th century. It only became the museum of childhood in the 70s. But yeah it's a kind of rite of passage to go there as a kid. Yeah I mean it was very age specific so there's a point at which you stop going there. Or I I'd go back if there were certain exhibitions on or you just want to walk down the sort of memory lane of you know how how childhood I suppose that was fun.
SPEAKER_00What a dream job for a curator to get right so you've just landed back at the VA and you've got to start conceiving a museum in your old neighbourhood where do you start?
SPEAKER_02Well it sort of inherited um there'd been a design competition so there was a sort of there was a shape of a building but I guess you know the job I I had was to work with a team that I was sort of embedded in you know to to really think about well what what should what should it be? What does it need to be from a the perspective of the VNA the perspective of contemporary culture the perspective of place of the population of that immediate environment what um what what are all the different opportunities so we we started to sort of scope out generate ideas basically and sort of pulling them apart and at some point you know I at that point I was the only person who was working on the project dedicatedly so we would work with people across the museum to kind of you know hot house ideas and evolve thinking and you know and there were many people who are who are up for it who are into it and then quite a few people in the museum who uh felt a bit sort of threatened because they thought it might represent you know move in change in the budgets and um so I had to do a lot of groundwork to sort of you know build relationships across the museum and for me it was an opportunity to sort of you know in the wider sense of the arts museum sector of diversifying that you know so I was going back to those feelings that I had when I first worked at the VNA you know this is 15 years later or whatever it was or 10 years later and um you know how do you how do you change the the makeup of um people who work in museums so that there's more representative of you know life and um how do you engage uh make and make you know what the museum the stories that museum shows and tells and what it collects represent a a broader section of society as well. So these were some of the sort of you know goals and aims of the project but it was a wild ride because I think two years in well immediate almost immediately the DCMS decided so this is 2015 so let's say in early 2016 VA was informed that it needed to vacate the building that's where it kept um a large portion of its 3D collections in West Kensington. So suddenly the museum was like making a new museum and then had to also deal with the conundrum of where it was going to move the 35000 objects that it needed access to on a daily basis. And um and I think by 2017 the projects that we were developing for the Olympic park had to be remaster planned and so these two so I went from basically doing one building to two buildings and completely reconceiving what VA East is was as a consequence of these kind of the morphing kind of you know landscape of politics and economics and practical need and so on. So it we it then it's ended up as you know VNA East Storehouse which opened last year VNAE Museum which is um opening in April this year um so my team and I which had started to sort of gently slowly build out wrote the curatorial briefs for those buildings developed the two separate buildings yeah but but interconnected and connected through their sort of values and programming and their curatorial agendas um so it's super exciting to see it all come to fruition with you know from the very first ideas where we were just trying to sort of you know articulate and sketch out what it could be to to being a built experience in a live you know a live place.
SPEAKER_00And so the the storehouse became a pretty much a unique thing right you know that sort of yeah through circumstance that you take you to find somewhere to keep 35,000.
SPEAKER_02Well this is where the museum was quite brave in that sense it said you know it did a lot of all the due diligence of you know where can we put it how much is it going to cost what what's the benefit what's the need and decided quite quickly not to just kind of take those that portion of the collection and move it into a kind of you know fairly low cost semi-rural location and decided that you know proximity to the working body of the museum in London was paramount but that also critically that public access was paramount and how could it go from you know a store that didn't really give people very much access on a year-on-year basis to being all about public access and engagement and going behind the scenes so it's so where did that idea come from it sort of evolved over over the years um you know starting with this problem of what do we do and and I think you know V8 East even though it wasn't initially part of that sort of you know project of moving the collection definitely was the was one of the major sort of catalysts of rethinking you know the museum for the 21st century um thinking about access thinking about how how and who whose story is told who's telling it and how to engage people in these collections that are publicly theirs so there've been a lot of these sorts of ideas evolving across the museum body within the team that I was sitting in and I think that all sort of came together to so that meant the leadership could you know really get behind that and um have have the faith and have the confidence I suppose to say you know what this this could be a new typology of museum um experience and we've really we all collectively believe that it would be really popular and inspiring and interesting and engage particularly younger audiences in a way that maybe sometimes more traditional conventional museum experiences don't hold people's attention in the same way.
SPEAKER_00Most people who go to museums do not know you know what a crate looks like or you know the care and attention that goes into the storage and of these work and the skill of it all right and so for me it really opened up the whole process of sharing art and I've always been interested in you know hiding nothing and the fact that you can see the supports and the struts and people working on um restoration and whatever is the whole artwork. You know that becoming much more a part of everyday life which is the museum is a working place. Yeah and I was talking to a client here the other day who'd been on my recommendation been telling everybody to go go and have a look and um they couldn't believe how slow it all was you know the the the technicians they were like they were just moving so slow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah yeah but it's like moving a precious pot in your own home exactly you know you take care you don't want it to smash yeah and you know look the modern contemporary art is the media is so so you know wide ranging um but also if you've got a so it it demands um a lot of different skills to be able to you know know how to handle something sensitively and carefully but also the surface of an old painting is also you know vulnerable and then that in collections like the VNA you've got everything from you know ceramic fag fragments to you know ancient textiles and fashion and metalware um I just love how painting prints drawings how much of a jumble it was as well in the best possible way you know like a real sort of like yeah cacophony of of culture yeah I think we we decided pretty early on to lean into that kind of you know the eclecticism of the collection and any collection is just you know an assemblage of things that you know changes over time as different specialists and experts acquire things and shift the curatorial kind of focus so it's really you know it's a bit a collection that's been around for quite some time and it's grown and morphed and changed according to those shifts in visual and material culture. So it's and because it's you know it's it's art design, craft, it's it's it's um quite representative In many ways. It's really diverse. So it's not, you know, it's not it's a long-winded way of saying it's not just painting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02For example.
SPEAKER_00It's the Bowie archive, right? And all those clothes.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah, there's there's also, you know, as well as the collection, there is a collection of archives, archives of companies, archives of people. So the the David Bowie archive was one of the last things that I worked on before I moved on to another position. And he had wanted the his collection to go to the VA because it's the National Theatre and Performance Collection, but also I think you know he was so interested in lots of different cultural art forms that I think what was really special about acquiring his archive was that it could be brought into dialogue with you know artifacts from the Japanese collection about you know theatre and performance or um so on and so forth.
SPEAKER_00Him being such a chameleon and taking from yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02And I think that's one of the brilliant things about the B ⁇ A's collection is that you can have this sort of wide-ranging dialogues as part of this sort of creative process. You know, other collections, other archives, you know, there's there are other performers, um, PJ Harvey's given um a lot of material from her personal collection in recent years, designers like Kenneth Grange and um and you know, but also 19th-century specialist sort of metalware producers like Elkington and stuff. So there's a real kind of huge resource in that sense, and that's partly was the motivation as well, is like how how can the collection be not just something you go and kind of look at and read about, but how like many companies and individual designers and makers come to the VNA's for inspiration. Um and that that sort of source book nature of the collection was also something that was important to the storehouse vision.
SPEAKER_00You know, how could and people don't need special access for that, if I understand correctly.
SPEAKER_02Anyone that's that's the other request stuff. Been the other kind of brilliant opportunities, like how uh yes, anybody can request stuff because it's a because a public collection. Um you don't need to sort of you know have a sorted highly specific research purpose.
SPEAKER_00Um which I think is the case that to go to the Tate Library or the British Library or many other like archives.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, I guess because it's you know, yeah, exactly. But I mean I think I think they're probably inundated with everybody wanting to look and they've had to sort of limit um you know the amount of um works you can request at any one time in order to be able to offer that service to as many people as possible. Um I'm sure there's a bit of you know recalibrating that will be done over the years to make sure that um researchers can get to what they need to get to and the public can get to what it wants to get to. And it's just a balance, but it felt it's such a radical shift from what was practically possible previously, and I think what's also you know been an important factor is the way that um you know, and most museums have a fantastic offering for you know school-age pupils, students, older students, um, specialist groups, and the storehouse has got that sort of baked into it as well, in terms of working with um school groups and students to you know to go a bit deeper or to develop a particular creative brief, and it's got the sort of spaces and resources and expertise where it can do that, and that's that's so amazing to be able to, you know. When the last time I was in there, um there are a group of I think there were six-form students who were working. I don't know, I'm actually gonna probably get this wrong, but let's say they were working with East London Dance Company and and Wayne McG, some choreographers from Wayne MacGregor studio to devise a performance in front of one of the stage cloths that's currently on display, which was a ballet rouse cloth designed by Picasso. You know, and you just think you see you've got this amazing kind of world of dance history that you can explore and the original artifacts there. Then you've got the local expertise of like choreographers and performers from Wayne McGregor and He's Sun and Dance. You know, what what a kind of extraordinary um world to kind of help you kind of discover and develop your own creative thinking at that age. It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00The visit made me proud to be alive in London and to know you personally, to get taken round and to be close to the conceiving of it. And yeah, just the fact that that thing exists is is a really remarkable thing. I hope it hope they figure out how to make it work with the budget and all that sort of stuff, because that cannot be easy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's it's um it's proving hugely popular.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's great.
SPEAKER_02Um, you know, but it I mean it's the conundrum for all cultural institutions, you know, everybody's having to do the same or more with less. You know, there's not enough state subsidy. There's you know, portions of private philanthropic support, but again, it's not the same incentive as it might be in other countries. People have like less and less disposable income, so where they go and spend it is you know, it's a bit of a bit of a tussle. And it's yeah.
SPEAKER_00It is the same across the entire economy, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, restaurants and you know, even hairdressers are all facing that tough situation. There we go.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank you for the insights into the V8 East World project, it must have been to work on.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so after that, what was next for you on the um career?
SPEAKER_02Well at the beginning of 2023, I um I'd uh I've been offered a job in Denmark and a museum called Arros in Aarhus, which is the second city. Yeah, um in Jutland, in the sort of north of the country. And so I moved, I relocated to Denmark. Um and the job there was a bit different, it was much more visual arts focused, just to oversee the curatorial and learning teams, about 20 people together. Umuseum with a collection that was largely Danish but also international, um wide-ranging sort of mix of artistic practice, and um they were building a new James Terrell's Sky Space at the same time, so it was about sort of like you know, a new chapter in the in the the programming, the exhibition programming, thinking about expanding the collection, and then delivering this new wing of um of the museum. So I I really like the Capitol Project work, you know, where you're kind of revisioning places, thinking about public experience, architecture, design, all of that coming together. So um I did a lot of work to restructure the team, um rethinking the sort of vision with the newish director of the museum at the time. Um recruited some new curators, started plotting some sort of you know anchors in the in the forward programme of um collaborations with other in institutions internationally to bring their collections to Denmark, commissioning artists to make new work for the new space that opened last year. Um so quite quite varied, um but I was I think I was just finding it really difficult to you know to to settle in Denmark. My husband couldn't move out until 2025, and so um after about 18 months I decided to call call it quids and came back to the UK. Um I'd employed a British curator uh as well, Isabella Maidman, who um was was fantastic, and she took over from me for about sort of six months and then was offered a position in Oslo, so she's still living out in um in the Nordics. Um there's a lot of interesting work going on there, but it's just sort of too difficult to make it work with my family.
SPEAKER_00So big change as well as the context, yes. It sounds like you are so interested in the you know the culture and the context of showing art and like your growing up and you know talking about how you felt like an outsider and wanting to change that, and it's that's different in different countries, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. They're gonna have different nuances.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I was living in it was you know, August is a lovely city, but it's also very small, and I think I realised that I I like the something about the context of a large international, you know, city with um incredibly diverse population in all the ways you want to sort of look at that. Um and I really missed that too. So I came back to London and thought just spent some time thinking about what I wanted to do next, and you know, then the further up the kind of food chain you go, if it as it were, the more your roles become about management and leadership, and you get further and further away from um some of the ideas and the work that you know led you to this field in the first place. So there's a real moment for me to think about like, well, what do I want to do at this point in my career? Um do I want to you know go back to some research topics that I'd looked at before? Do I want to work on my own for a bit rather than you know folding back into a big institution? Um, I love working with a team, I love developing you know younger curators, helping support people, helping with some of those sorts of social purpose goals of institutional working, but there was something about this time where I thought I actually just want to I want to focus on a bit more of a kind of you know academic profile type opportunity. So an opportunity came up for me to um I was offered a research fellowship by a um the family of the of the estate of Charles and Marie Eames who you know re were reorganizing a foundation uh in Los Angeles, and they asked me to come back and work with them over the course of three years, developing some you know research and producing a new publication and some new sort of um you know convenings in the form of a kind of professional conference. So that's what I'm doing at the moment, which is and also then I thought okay, this is great, so I can be based back here in London but also travel as I as I need to um to consult with different libraries, archives, and collections. And so I thought, well, why I'm while I'm going back into that world, I could do a you know a deep dive and turn that into a PhD. So I'm I'm also a PhD researcher on the same subject. Yeah, so I'm doing that at the Royal College of Art. So it's you know, it's an interesting time, it's giving me a lot of breathing space as we're looking at the words breathe, breathe in, breathe out on the walls here. I'm thinking, yes, it's like breathing in and out, thinking about, you know, remembering what it is that I enjoy about aspects of design history and delving into those sort of you know, life and work and processes and writing more and thinking about a very sort of singular topic, but from new perspectives, um asking myself where where I would like to take this in the future. Um privilege, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, fantastic.
SPEAKER_02I know, treat.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, okay, Catherine. So I hope you've been thinking about my final question. I like to ask people if you could be on somebody's shoulder. Any artist in the widest possible sense, throughout any point in history, on their shoulder for a day or two while they're making any artwork, who would it be and what artwork would it be and why?
SPEAKER_02Oh gosh, this is such a hard question. And I've gone through so many different people. Like my undergraduate dissertation for at Sheffield, for which I won this tiny travel grant, was um to go to Martha in Texas. So this was only this was 1997, so it's only a couple of years after he died, and it was before Martha became Martha. Yeah, you know, and so I was thinking, well, maybe Donald Judd, because I've always loved his work and I would you know want to spend time with just like understanding his process more. Obviously, a lot of his work was fabricated by other people, but he was incredibly precise. But then I thought, you know, mmm, would it be that? I'm not sure. Maybe it it would be a film director. You know, I th I love the world of film, and I think that that just kind of incredible blend of all of these different skills from the director and the cinematographer to the sound people to the actors to the production designers to you know people who are set building. So it might be in that world, and but when would it be? What would it be? Yeah, you can only have one. Would it be with Billy Wilder on some Like It Hot, probably? Or Fellini, eight and a half. I don't know, yeah.
SPEAKER_00There'd be quite different experiences, those two, I think, wouldn't they? Yeah, totally. Yeah. I know which one I'd go for. I don't know, I don't.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, or you know, talking about Twin Peaks, David Lynch. David Lynch making Wild at Heart or Yeah. So I don't know if that's an acceptable answer, but well you've not chosen one.
SPEAKER_00Oh right, so I've got to have an accessible answer. Yeah, you've got to choose one.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Okay. Oh, this is really a tough question. Then I would go into the studio with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds while he was making an album called Henry's Dream. That's what I'd I'd just be in the groom.
unknownHenry's Dream.
SPEAKER_01Henry's Dream.
SPEAKER_00Henry's Dream.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, very good. Very good.
SPEAKER_02Listening to it. If you don't know it, you should listen to it. Why did you do it? Lots of kind of you know heavy, rattly typical nickel for the bad seed songs from the 90s, but also the most heartbreakingly beautiful ballads.
SPEAKER_01And very big, you know, southern gothic storytelling.
SPEAKER_00Okay, well done. Well, any one of those.
SPEAKER_02That is a rat. Excellent. The mirror.
SPEAKER_00Here we go.
SPEAKER_02A little different to usual.
SPEAKER_00We've had a little bit more time, yeah. We've had fresh a little style on there. Um so still graduated here through the back and we've layered it through the top. Um, we've cut into it a little bit more maybe than usual, um, which has been quite nice. So that's really going to free it up around there and um just bump back in when it was sort of midway to release uh midway dry to release a bit more weight. We've twisted in the curl cream. Yeah, lovely. Looks nice around the back, doesn't it? Yeah, nice and shiny.
SPEAKER_02Very good.
SPEAKER_00And I don't think that needs any oil.
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_00No, because it looks shiny enough. Especially with all the light as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, fantastic. Thank you very much. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00That was really good. Oh, excellent. Yeah, I was real honoured. Well, the haircut's complete and didn't it look great? Catherine said that she wasn't very articulate today, but man, what a speaker she was and what an inspiring career that's been. I hope you found some value from it. I'm gonna put a link to Catherine's website and it's got some amazing photos of the exhibitions that she mentioned while I was cutting her hair. I loved that moment she noticed the breathing words on the wall and how she related that to where she was in her career. I thought that was very poignant. If you also felt like an outsider in the art world, drop us a comment and let us know. We're not alone. And we hope to see you next time in the DK VK podcast.