Interview with Kevin
Harman
By Rea Cris
If one wishes to use labels, you could broadly term Kevin Harman a sculptor,
but there is an element of performance in his work, which lends it to
being momentary and ephemeral. The materials he uses are raw and ordinary:
everyday objects, which are joined together to portray a more captivating
side to the world.
I am meeting Harman for an interview and he leads me to his studio, which
is hidden in a courtyard behind a block of flats and is an undiscovered
wild west ghost town with a Scottish twist (a saloon sign sits comfortably
next to a kilt-making shop). You couldn’t expect anything less from
an artist who scavenges the world for ignored and overlooked beauty.
Harman is truly a kind and considerate artist, a real eco-warrior as a
majority of his work is made from reclaimed or recycled material. His
approach of reduce-reuse is most refreshing and proves helpful for his
art practice in numerous ways.
“I’ve also got a garage in the Grange. I’ve
got a lot of faith in people. I needed space to work and I had no money,
so I knocked on people’s doors and said “Hi I’m a young
Edinburgh artist and I need a space to work and I’ll pay with drawings.”
People didn’t have the space but were wishing me good luck. Eventually
I came upon this elderly couple that said, “We’ve just been
banned from driving! Have our garage”. So I moved in there, done
a bit of weeding in their garden. They’re great.”
It would have been a treat to see this garage, as most of Harman’s
materials and objects are stored there. His previous pieces have included
golf clubs, knives, garbage cans and JCB buckets. When I mention to him
that some people describe his tactics of sourcing materials as guerrilla,
he frowns and then laughs. It is more the case of the objects finding
him rather than him finding the objects.
“I just go to a junk store or car boot sale, I’ll
walk around and see something…It’s not what I go out and do,
its what naturally happens.”
He sees himself more as a facilitator or tool that is at the mercy of
these objects that tell him what to do and how to put them together, because
they demand it should be so. For Harman, art is not about grand statements,
expensive materials and costing outrageous sums, but rather about the
basic joy and fascination of everyday objects.
“What I want to do is make people aware of these beautiful
everyday things going on around us.”
Harman’s contagious joy-de-vivre and his lack of money actually
feeds his creativity and inspirations.
“The thing is, there is no money. Fair enough I am not going
to lie, I would like it to be a little bit easier, but how much easier?
If I started having money to buy lots of things… The cogs work best,
when you’ve got nothing in your cupboard to eat. You get so inventive.
Jam and pasta is actually all right! Jam and cheese sandwich is really
nice. (Jam is what I had more than anything else). When you have not got
a lot of money, you utilize everything around you; everything becomes
a real potential.”
KNIVES IN A BUCKET was created from unburdening charity shops around Edinburgh
of their un-sellable and unusable knives, as they are considered dangerous
objects. There is a very seize-the-day attitude to Harman and he certainly
does not sit around waiting for things to come to him.
“I don’t really like people who say ‘I will
allow you to show your work in my space.’ No way! If I want my work
to be shown, I’ll do it myself… I’ll promote myself.
A lot of the work I do its self-promotion… I need material, I need
space to show work, I want an audience… so you have all these problems.
Solutions for me, was the SKIP series. I have a space, all the materials
I want and an audience.”
Harman’s SKIP series is a manifestation of the socially inclusive
aspect of his work. The idea behind SKIP is that Harman finds a skip [dumpster],
empties it of its contents and then rearranges it. Taking place over the
weekend, with a mini opening on the Sunday evening beside the selected
skip, surprised builders show up on Monday morning to a tidy aesthetically
composed skip. The people at the opening are usually the residents or
people who pass on their daily routine or anyone who has happened to chance
by during the installation.
“It was influence from Jim
Lambie’s floors. I worked on one of his floors. The idea behind
them is ‘Maximum impact minimum space.’ Every time he does
it, it exists differently; it grows into the contours of the room. I thought
‘Absolutely fabulous.’ Every time I do these skips, it’s
a different outcome.”
As far as self-promotion goes, SKIP was a complete success and put Harman
on the art radar, but perhaps to their determent.
“I’ve done a SKIP in a gallery. Visually it was beautiful,
but the performance element was taken out of it. Sterile… If you
stumble upon it you don’t have any preconceived ideas, there are
no expectations… It allowed people to see the other work I’ve
been doing, but looking back it was so sad doing it, I wasn’t outside,
I wasn’t chatting to the people and the hobos who are there, giving
them a drink of your beer.”
Removing his work from a gallery context and the inherent participation
of a random audience is central to the accessibility and subtly of Harman’s
work. He skirts between an art world salivating at his potential and being
a man of the people and making art for the people.
“I mean what is a gallery? That’s all a space to show
work, you get people in to see the work, it’s just the same circle
of people… I do enjoy a good wander around the gallery. The grandeur
of the buildings, the entrance and the pillars outside, announcing you
are going to see something. Some people don’t like that and find
it weird. People who go and wear their funky cloths, not that it’s
bad, but I sometimes feel for people who might not like that. My brother
is like that. He’s a joiner [carpenter], he feels uncomfortable
when he goes in, I know he does I can sense it. But he acts as if he’s
not.”
His work does not fit the mould of an everlasting and stoic sculpture
and does not lend itself easily to movement. Harman admits that if he
were to sell one of his pieces, he would have to set it up personally
and repeat this every time it was to be moved. This is both impractical
and defeating, as his performance of installing is as much part of the
work as the finished product.
Harman’s name shot to
higher fame at the Edinburgh College of Art 2008 degree show, with his
piece, LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR, causing so much controversy that it was nearly
removed from the show. The ingenious work, which was featured in the Sculpture
Court, consisted of doormats from Bruntsfield apartment stairwells that
Harman borrowed in the name of art. In their wake, a note was left suggesting
one ask neighbours about their whereabouts. Later and after many phone
calls and hiring of lawyers, Harman invited the parties concerned to attend
the opening, not only to claim back their property, but to socialise with
their neighbours and, best of all (a rare treat), to voice their views
with the artist himself. The work was still in jeopardy at the eleventh
hour, but was allowed to proceed, partly because as Harman says the police
weren’t interested in returning the 200-plus doormats themselves.
The whole experience nearly
cost him his sanity and he lost a few acquaintances along the way. The
stories of the ‘injured’ residents, the stories behind the
individual doormats, and the whole aftermath could be a whole separate
piece of artwork in itself. Though he willingly retells the tales, the
desire to turn all this documentation into another piece of artwork does
not tempt him.
“Stories… one doormat that I had taken was from an
older woman. We all admired it at the college! It said ‘Welcome
Aboard’ and it had a little anchor. I made sure when I was setting
up the piece that it was visible. When I was composing it I didn’t
want a red doormat next to it, it would take away from it. When you compose
something, it just happens, something works and this one sat nicely, but
then she had phoned up really upset about it…and I had to get it
back to her. I went and returned it and she told me the history behind
the doormat. Her and her husband are from a nautical background and this
doormat was given to them by their daughter, who’d been out to Malta.
It was quite interesting to find out her take on it. She didn’t
think it was a good piece, she thought there were other ways to go about
it.”
Another stairwell claimed to mobilize against him.
“23 Montpellier, it turned out I knew the guy that lived
in the stairs, an American guy. I went to the bar and was chatting with
him and this friend of mine comes up and says ‘I love the idea for
the piece with the doormats.’ The American guy was so pissed off
because I was a decent guy. His stairwell had all came together and compiled
this plan of how to get the ‘artist’ back… He comes
around to the pub I work at and he does not acknowledge me as a human
being, at all. He doesn’t even look at me and we used to chat and
all this over a doormat and they got it back!”
His invitations did put him in the line of fire. I asked whether he was
worried he would be physically attacked at the opening?
“Petrified, absolutely petrified. I did get angry people
coming down. The majority of people were howling, they thought it was
great and laughing, the comments book is full of mixed emotions. They
had met people they hadn’t met before. It worked, it wasn’t
something that I thought up in a week, it had taken god knows how much
work, and research.”
The choice of doormats is interesting. One of the most disregarded objects
actually holds more significance than we give it credit for.
“It’s only a door separating people. It’s funny.
You put a doormat down outside your door. It’s this barrier you
cross into someone’s domain. This little extension of character,
that sits outside for everyone to see. You build up a profile of the person
who lives inside based on the doormats.”
We know we all do it.
For all his kindness and eco-friendly anti-consumerist ways, Harman is
not hesitant about what he has to do to make his art.
“Hurting others, I mean I did hurt others when I took the
mats, but sometime you did need to. Well sometimes you have to hurt others
for the greater good. It’s quite selfish. As an artist you have
to be quite selfish. I’m quite conscious of it. I will do what I
want to do, and if I do hurt others then…fuck that’s it, I’m
going to have to hurt others.”
But I guess when you are willing to risk everything for your art, you
are ready to accept and, more importantly, face the consequences.
Next up for Kevin is a trip
to Romania and Poland on the Richard Demarco Travel Scholarship to continue
with the SKIP series. Closer to home, it looks like ideas are still brewing
in his mind. He hints at future endeavours he would like to do, but he
doesn’t want to divulge because it might get him in trouble…again.
We can’t wait.
http://www.kevinharman.co.uk/
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