What role do you think art plays in prompting public dialogue about all those things?
I think art can play a significant role in this kind of dialogue. Art really has a place to be an informer. All the way through history, artists have been at the forefront of responding to contemporary issues in society and being a bit like beacons for the general public, for society at large.
I think this is a major role to embrace as being a contemporary artist and I take that role quite seriously. That’s something we have the capacity to do and people do listen, they do learn from art.
There’s a tendency to categorise art, whether it be political art, feminist art, environmental art and marginalise them as a result. The impact of these things can become lessened because of it. I think it might be better if it didn’t happen that way, that people were prepared to actually take this social comment in and to learn from it by being inspired by it.
But even in the art world, I find these areas of social commentary are often viewed in a way that marginalises the art and the artists specialising in this type of creativity and in doing so treats it and them almost with a bit of disdain.
“Why don’t you become a politician or why don’t you become an environmentalist?” That’s a question that’s been asked of me any many times. “Are you first and foremost and artist or an environmentalist?” I can’t really disengage myself from either of them and I don’t really see the necessity to do that.
