Conversation 4: Iris, Councillor for Margate Central Ward, CT9 1XZ

Iconic peaks

Iris and I were long overdue a catch up. The last time we had spoken was before the foundations of the Turner Contemporary had been laid, before the design that now defines the eye-line had been settled on: it was 12 years ago.  Aged ten, I had interviewed Iris as part of a primary school project on ‘Turner’. Iris, then Deputy Leader of Thanet Council, now Councillor for Margate Central Ward laughed as she read through the interview where she fervently declared that the Turner Contemporary would be a success, “I’m absolutely certain – its got to be a success”. Her words, diligently recorded on a Dictaphone and transcribed verbatim by my ten-year-old self, were resurrected by her familiar voice re-reading them. Back sat opposite one another in one of Thanet District Council’s offices was a rare chance to resurrect Margate as it was then. I remembered vividly the design splattered across the newspaper cuttings I collected for my project, Snohetta and Spence’s imagining (as pictured in the article below) is not the one Margate has since become acquainted with. Subsequent to my first interview with Iris, David Chipperfield architects were later commissioned by Kent County Council to design the peaked, angular building that stands confidently on the seafront. It has imprinted, and given tangible shadow to Turner’s legacy. It reflects and absorbs the elements, exchanging hues with the sea that surrounds it. 1 million visitors and numerous installations on, it may not be too bold to label it iconic in the cultural awakening it has stirred.

Article published in the KM Extra, November 9, 2001

I wanted to know first and foremost about what had changed, from expectations then to realisations now. Though the design itself is different, the outcomes and impact, Iris confirmed, were not; “it has been a driver for regeneration and economic development, I think that the very fact that we have a Turner Contemporary here has brought people in from all over the world.” She recalled that when she was Deputy Leader of Thanet, there were a myriad of problems facing Margate: in 2002, they were told Dreamland was going to close, it finally exhaled its last, faltering breath in 2006, dying, slowly but surely. The Sea Bathing Hospital had closed; children were setting fires inside it. The Winter Gardens was still being subsidised by the Council “and still is”, she added. “It was a whole jigsaw of things that needed to happen, and the good news is that the Turner has done exactly what we hoped it would do and, even exceeded.” Exceeded is most definitely the word, the Turner Contemporary recently welcomed its 1 millionth visitor, well ahead of schedule. Before the Turner opened, it was predicted that about 300,000 people would walk through its doors in the first two years.  That so many people have trampled Margate’s stretch to see it is testament to the intrigue that the space invokes. They have trampled, in all weathers, pursuing the sublime* and the ridiculous**. This exceeded footfall stands as an acknowledgement of the capacity that art has to change the direction people walk and by implication the direction they think.

Sky snaps

Cultural regeneration can be a fidgety topic. Iris’s commitment to Margate was unmoving. In light of her belief in the Turner Contemporary, I asked Iris whether she thought the Turner was a sustainable force for regenerating Margate in itself. “There’s lots of things we’ve got to do and its step by step and it is slowly but surely.” I couldn’t help but think that in the 12 years spanning between, Iris had walked step by step with Margate in one way or another. I suppose every resident has, subject to occasional abandonment. Walking around the obstructions, never –-- changing --- altering --- wavering – the – pace: “we’ve had dreadful downs since you interviewed me […] but […] we’ve got the Turner its spreading.” For all the immeasurable guises of cultural regeneration, Iris’s belief in its capacity to drive economic growth was unswerving. As with many beginnings, it wasn’t easy. Initially people didn’t see the need for a Turner Contemporary, there was a lot of resistance, it was thought by many a new school might be better use of council funds. Iris, smiled, retrospectively bemused by the imaginably heated discussions she had no doubt been witness to, “I think we lost control of the Council slightly on the Turner…” That the Turner Contemporary has been an evolution, of thought, of place, of people, fits with its momentum for change. It consistently demands that its audience reconnect and reconfigure their thoughts in the enlarged expanse for thinking that it affords them. It is a tribute to the town, its past, its present and an acknowledgement of its future. It was the injection that Margate needed, but it also would not have happened without the walkers, walkers with feet capable of inventing new routes, new ways to go: blind to the limits.

Brush strokes and a peaked disturbance

Here, Iris digressed into the anecdotal. A story from behind the scenes that left me beaming: ‘Director of the Turner Contemporary, a hair raising appointment’ - to affix a title. “I was on the panel that interviewed Victoria – it was probably around the time you interviewed me.” “Yes, yes, it says there – Victoria was 37 then…” I pointed to my aforementioned previous interview, “we’ve just appointed the Director, she’s very young – just 37”, Iris of 12 years ago echoed. She confirmed, her opinion unswerving, the success of the Turner Contemporary demonstrable proof: “to me, she seemed very, very young, but very very on the ball.” Iris went on “what swung it for me – she said that to get people who never went into art galleries to come in, she had a thing in the window at the Tate Liverpool to say ‘Come in and have a hair cut’, and they got their hair cut, these young men and others, and then they used the hair in an installation. And I thought, well, she got people in, people that had never gone into an art gallery before.” The accessibility of the Turner Contemporary has undeniably been key to its success, enabling a diverse range of audiences to appreciate and be curious about art.

Interchangeable hues

I had to ask, “are there moments, or a single isolatable moment, when you’ve thought ‘this was so worth all the work, every second of the struggle'?” I felt that there had to have been conceivable instances, memorable words that had resounded in Iris’ mind as she walked out Margate.

“Every – - -

day”

she pronounced. Having re-listened and transcribed our talking since, I can still hear Iris saying this. I think I will hear Iris saying this every time I return to the Turner Contemporary. ‘Every’ lifts upward, ‘day’, a determined diminuendo full stopping her conviction. “Every day I think its worth it. Nobody ever went there before, to that spot, but they do now.” She smiled, “I go in with my grandchildren, and my Paul, who’s thirty six now, has three children – his stepson is sixteen, and his little boy is six and his daughter is four. I go in with them and particularly Riley the six year old absolutely loves it and, […] we did go to see the Tracy Emin, and they didn’t blink – but the next time we went and there was a display of people in costumes, the – erm – exhibition was woman in costumes, and Riley who’s a very serious little boy, he said ‘she hasn’t got much clothes on…’ and yet he’d gone to Tracy Emin and not noticed a thing.” Iris, grandmother, laughed at thought and so did I. The divisiveness of art was manifest, but also its capacity to intrigue any audience if they are given the chance to see it. This snapshot of childhood innocence captured the essence of the Turner Contemporary, a space designed to speak to everyone in some way. I pictured scenes I had witnessed, a pair of older ladies stifling laughs as they considered, with every seriousness the ‘Continuum of Cute’ (Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing), weighing up whether one animal was cuter, or indeed, less cute than the one proceeding it. It left ideas spinning in their minds, or at the very least a new concept of ‘cute’. Riley too, I imagine left inspired in some way or another. It was worth it.

Reflecting on/Reflections of: Margate

Moving on from the Turner Contemporary as sole resuscitator, I wanted to unfold the town as Iris saw it; “what do you think it is about Margate that means it perseveres and perseveres?” “I think its resilient”, she affirmed. “There’s an amazing loyalty from the people that have been here forever, just one of many examples - the owners of the B&B’s at Buenos Aeros who have struggled through winters, sometimes taking on people with benefits to get through the winter. It’s a resilience, but its definitely also a whole new generation of people who are interested in coming here, it’s a bit bohemian, it’s a bit different…” A combination of interested outsiders, reshaped tourism and relentless walkers was what kept Margate going, it had kept a bold head ‘'bove contentious waves’. Now, things are happening in Margate, its perseverance through the cold winters is beginning to pay off. There are, however, many more steps to tread.

 Confronting the view

We began to speak of Iris’s Margate. I wanted to know, what had brought her here, to this place above all others. Iris and her family, husband Michael and three small boys were tourists from London, unshackling themselves from life in the city and tramping down to Margate in the summer. They found their haven in a hotel, near the Nottingham Castle in Westgate. Margate is the backdrop of their holiday photographs, “on the last couple of days of the holiday, we would walk into Margate… and you know, I’ve lovely photos of Peter who’s now thirty three on my hip down at the seafront.” The decision to move came after their holidays, “I really wanted a little small holding and I came down on my own with the three boys and this young girl who used to help me a bit and we came along and walked up the steps, and I said to all of them, if this house is at the top of the steps we’re having it cause its so near the beach, and it was, so we bought the house, so my husband who didn’t even see it said we could buy it.” It was instinctive, gut moving feeling that brought Iris to Margate, and a will to bring up children by the sea. Holiday snaps turned into life, life in a new town, “and then, of course, dare I mention, I got political and that took over…”

Iris was so full of stories, of energy for change, for change then and you could hear it now too. The political that took over was Iris campaigning, campaigning for people, campaigning for nursery provision, not yet provided. She rolled her sleeves up and campaigned for what she believed in, often with babe on hip, continuously surprised by the attitudes that she came across. She recalled a headline about her in the paper ‘Woman who wants nurseries on the rates’ it had said. Iris, then a child minder had gawked at the attitudes she was uncovering, a disarmingly new world. “It was as if I wanted it because I was always surrounded by children – that’s the attitude that was there – I used to go to the beach with 11 children sometimes, pushing a huge silver cross pram – room for three, with buckets and spades underneath, I loved having children round.” She remembered this scene for an instant, before going on to affirm: “we made change, we got the provision”. The real motivation was the women Iris was campaigning for. It was the mid 1980’s, young, vulnerable women with small children living piled on top of one another, alongside drug abusers with nowhere to go during the day. “They had to walk up and down the beach and fill in the day because they weren’t allowed in the house.” Iris had gone in to talk to these women, and their health visitors, and it was “another moment to be political”, as she campaigned for their right to a sustainable pace of life by the sea. Iris, then with sleeves rolled up, babe on hip, hasn’t stopped walking since.

Surrounding Cloud

We returned, finally and were to close on the Turner and the importance of art in a town often demarcated by its deprivation. Iris was unremitting in the value of it – “there are loads of things I see, a young lad I knew was unemployed for a long time, he was one of the volunteers I saw in the Turner and then he got a job there, so it works, it definitely works.” That Iris had seen and cited such a tangible outcome for a single individual is testament to her enduring ability to see the value of change for the better, small, slowly, surely. Testament to her will to walk. It was this that had permeated our discussion 12 years ago, the importance of investing in Margate, slowly, surely determinedly.  It is now this, for which the Turner Contemporary stands as signifier on the seafront. Margate’s will to keep pace. She concluded, as always with her unmistakeable energy and with an acknowledgement that her work was by no means done “its wonderful what’s happening, but we have to make sure its positive because there are issues about changes in benefits for people and that’s getting serious now.” Our conversation came to a halting stop, we had talked for more minutes than anticipated, Iris had more stories to tell but she also had somewhere else she had to be. We laughed at the strangeness of reconvening such time on from the beginning of it all. Iris had a last flick through the ageing articles that marked out a moment in the journey, still satisfyingly un-concluded, still, in some sense, beginning. She walked out, and on. The next time I saw Iris was early September, walking Margate again, a seasoned and practiced pace.

Turner Contemporary, Margate, 2013

*Sublime: 88 of Turner’s works hanging in momentous observance on the walls in ‘Turner and Elements’ (28 January 2012 – 13 May 2012).

**Ridiculous: The overstuffed (gluttonous, even) Horniman Walrus - part of Brian Dillon’s exhibition ‘Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing’ (24 May 2013 – 15 September 2013).