[Beep]
I think it's important to be mischievous
If there isn't any humour in the work
then I feel something's wrong
>Rose Finn-Kelcey was an artist. She was born in 1945 and I died in 2014
The nature of work that Rose Finn-Kelcey made throughout her career was very diverse
Its diverse in terms of subject and also style. I mean this is work that
in a way is recognisably by one artist. It has a consistent vision to it but in
another way it could almost be made by any number of different artists
> She was interested in using a whole range of materials. Very rarely did she come back
to using a material again and again
So there was an engagement really with
ideas at the core of everything she made, and then thinking about how materials
could best express what she wanted to communicate
>She is a very substantial artist
But her status, like the status of so many artists, is one that's defined by
the marketplace. And if you're an artist making work that is installation based
or performance based then it's very difficult for work such as that to be traded
And that is also a very conscious decision
And I think that's something that's at the heart of her work 'Bureau de Change'
It's about artistic value but it's also about financial value as well
>I was trying to find ways of using money in my work and it was at the time that the
Van Gogh Sunflower sale happened
And it seemed such a good combination of conceptual and material
Well when I first heard the news I thought well twenty four million
five hundred, what is that, I mean it was so abstract to me I couldn't
understand what it even looked like
and I also felt that here was I
struggling for years making artworks without actually ever
getting paid properly
And there's something very ludicrous about the fact
that this painting had reached that kind of sum of money when in fact
most artists just don't make money out of their work
I mean a lot of the coins
are actually quite dirty and they really reflect the fact that money has
been in circulation in has past through people's hands and once the piece is
finished the money has to be bagged up and taken back to the bank and it also
goes back into people's pockets
So I've already done it four times before, which
means there are people across the country who have fragments of the
sunflowers unwittingly
>Rose had a very dry wit and I think in her work she
used that as a way to allow people to come in who weren't necessarily
part of the art world and also as an access point for people to think
about things which were much deeper and more profound
>'It Pays to Pray', they're all chocolate vending machines and I wanted them to
vend prayers but prayers that I had written and I thought well you go to a
chocolate vending machine when your blood sugar level is low so you also
pray when your spiritual level is low. So I wanted to make that connection
There was a time when artists were very frightened of even using the word
spiritual and I think that now it's not something that people are terrified of
I think it's something that they are questioning: what's going on here? Why are we here?
>She was very much involved with
different forms of political activism, social activism. An early work of hers
was a very large set of flags that were installed at Battersea Power Station
>I was really interested in putting messages in public spaces at that time
and that was in the early 70s when the 'Power to the People'
slogan was very much talked about in the newspaper. I took that slogan and
changed one word so it read 'Power for the People'. There was all sorts of problems
with the people living in Chelsea complaining that that they were sending
out a political message and I was saying but that's what they produce
So yes, there is a political slant to the work
>She really typifies a whole
generation of artists who came to the fore in the 60s and 70s especially who
were interested, not in objects but in maybe events and things that were transitory
>I like the fact that it's ephemeral, I like the fact that it
doesn't last beyond the time that it's actually there. It does at the same time
seem important for me to let go of what I've done and what I know from previous pieces
it's a problem in the art world because people want to see repeats or
they want to see some kind of style that that is representative an artist and I
tend not to fit into that
>I think her work is more poignant now than perhaps
it was at the time. I see it as being extremely relevant to where we are at this
point, whether that's themes to do with ecology, themes to do with power, activism
spirituality. So I really hope she gets the recognition that she deserves
because I think her work really speaks to people