Shall We Introduce Ourselves?

Steve Murray: Hello. We are GANGHUT – or some of GANGHUT, anyway. I’m Steve, this is Kevin, Sarah, Suzie, Derek. Perhaps everyone else should say Hello and say what your name is.

“Ruth”
“Bérengère ”
“Heather”
“Ashley”
“Emma”
“Lindsay”

Steve: Ok, so the idea for today was commissioned by PAR+RS around the theme of Collaboration. Today we’ll be expressing that idea through the medium of making.
As a basic framework for the day, we’ve knocked up a kit watchtower, and Suzie and Sarah will take the lead on making banners and slogans and things that we can use to pimp the watchtower once we’ve made it.
GANGHUT have used watchtowers quite a lot as a structure, but this one will also be part of our show at the DCA that opens soon, so we’re hoping that the tower will stay here for the next 3 months, if it doesn’t get destroyed. The tower will be about 7m high when its finished, and the platform, which will be able to support our weight, will be about 3 m off the ground. Whenever we finish at the end of today, we’ll go up the ladder and screw the last panel on so it should be reasonably inaccessible, and because of the way we’re making it, it should be pretty hard to push over as well.
I think we might split up into groups, and we’re gonna build the central platform on the floor with the legs assembled, and then about 8 or 9 of us will push the legs up in one smooth motion.

Heather Chan: So what’s the general shape? Is there a general shape in your head as to what it’s gonna look like?

Steve: Oh yeah, it’s pretty specific. These are the legs, so that should give you some sense of the height. This is the base of the platform. On top of that is a kind of 3m box, with the flags projecting beyond that.
Sarah maybe d’you want to get the banners out as well?

Sarah Forrest: Yeah, banners are there.

Ashley Branston: Have you got a drawing of it?

Steve: In my head.

Ashley: Could you do a wee sketch?

Steve: Yeah sure. See that’s the legs, and we can build this section – the platform – on the ground, with the legs bolted in with a single bolt, so they will be splayed out flat. If we can get all this assembled on the ground, with these legs sticking out like that, then we’ll be able to push these, and raise that and then the whole thing will come up as one. Then we’ll take it back into that giant X, which we’ll bolt through, and then we’ll have a really strong structure. It’s the first time we’ve done it like this.

Derek Lodge: We’ve got public liability insurance though.

Steve: Yeah, this is all covered by the DCA, so if anyone… umm you’ve probably not got steel toe caps on, anyone, have you?

Group: No.

Steve: Just watch your toes and things like that.

Derek: I hope those are all safety trainers that you’re all wearing.

Steve: Lift with your knees, not with your back. Measure twice cut once. If you’re gonna use a tool we can talk you through safe useage if you’re not au fait. What might be quite good is if we do the frame assemblage for the upper section first, on the ground. We can all break into teams and we can use these technical drawings so you can follow what I’m meaning. Basically -

Derek: – it kinda seems like we’ve just brought a load of people in to build our work for us, eh?

Steve: Well the way I described it was to say that it’s gonna be a bit like being in GANGHUT for a day, so I guess they basically are making our work for us…

Derek: Well what keeps recurring as part of GANGHUT’s projects is that there’s a certain mentality you get into when you’ve got a job to do and you’ve got a plan to do it. Somehow you unite as a group through doing that, so by the time you get to the icing on the cake – the kind of decorative touches and the extra bits, the ‘art’ bits – that process is all the more rich for it.

Steve: It’s worth saying that some of the text based stuff that might end up being on the banners, might arise out of sayings and slogans that come up during this build activity as well. So if any gold dust appears, grab a pen and we’ll set up an information station over there.

Derek: Have we talked about personalising stuff?

Steve: No. Maybe you should talk about that, Derek.

Derek: Well, as part of GANGHUT, we sometimes play a game called Squennis, which is a cross between squash and table tennis. This was invented at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop by Eden Joly, the technician up there. Through playing Squennis quite a lot, we all ended up with Squennis Names. You’ll probably be familiar with the concept of nicknames. Or maybe not. But anyway I’m Bingo. [gestures towards Steve] This is Boom Boom. Kevin, you’re –

Kevin Reid: I haven’t got one. I don’t play.

Derek: Oh. You haven’t got one. Well, this is Phat Bat [Sarah]. If during some point in the day you develop a nickname, you might want to fire it on your back, or indeed personalise your high visibility vest in any way you wish.

Steve: I notice that the ladies have taken their vests in last night. Seriously.

Suzie Scott: Well, while were making the banner. We just put some wee seams on them. Two seconds.
But we’ve got the banners here if people want to see them. There are some different shapes of banners: these are just in the standard banner shape, I guess. They’re about 2 m long and there are four of these, and we thought they might be good for text perhaps? We’ve got felt, fabric, spraypaint, and some stuff for stencils that we can use to decorate and customise them.
We’ve also got one big triangular shaped banner, and another two triangular ones that are slightly smaller. So these are all to be designed, or written on, or decorated.
We were thinking yellow, black and red, but we’ve also got spare hi vis things so we could use those as well.

Steve: Yeah we’ve got 25 of these, so feel free to chop them up.

Sarah: So yeah, there’s lots of bits and bobs that we can cut up and use.

Steve: Maybe when we start on the build, we can assemble the frames first. Amongst these 2×2s here, there are some pre-cut sections: there should be some marked A, some B and some C. There are some marked B & D, as well. If we could start by extracting them and putting them into separate piles.

Derek: Maybe it would be good if we all introduced ourselves at this point.

Steve: We did that already, Derek. We did that at the start.

Derek: Well I wasn’t here.

Group: We did do it.

Derek: Oh.

Steve: Well, for the benefit of Derek, perhaps we could go round and say Hello and say what your name is.

“Ruth”
“Bérengère”
“Heather”
“Ashley”
“Emma”
“Lindsay”

Steve: OK, thanks for that. Lets get going.

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On Encountering a Set Back

Steve Murray: Well when we designed this we cunningly engineered some problems that the group would have to solve during the course of the day, to enhance the bonding experience. Just to explore the collaborative approach to solving some bad measuring and cutting on my part. What a p*nis, eh?
It’ll be fine.

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Throwing Caution to the Wind

Kevin: GANGHUT kinda started because I was doing this residency at Spike Island in Bristol in 2004. I was the South West Art Fellow. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Spike Island’s space, but it’s huge. They’ve changed it now, they’ve cut it into sections, but when I was there it was massive. I had this big studio at one end of it, but I was supposed to do something in this massive space, and I basically just sh*t myself. So I phoned Jason [Nelson] who I grew up with, and we concocted this plan to start an art gang.

I’d been making little solo-build shelters while I was there anyway, because my studio was so big that I was getting agrophobic. I built a little space just so that I could hide in it, and then we just went on from there. I invited everyone down to Bristol, and when they arrived they were given overalls, which changed their identity straight away. And they had to build their own little spaces to sleep in, so that we could all live in the gallery together for two weeks.

Since then it’s snowballed. And it’s been pretty good. We’ve got a project space now, and Steve and Jason and myself went to Australia a while back to do a GANGHUT there. I guess it’s just that thing where you have to balance it with your own work. And some of us work together sometimes on other non-GANGHUT projects, or we’ll work together with different people as well. The thing that we’ve all got in common is this love of process. We actually enjoy the process more than anything else, and I think that’s an important factor.

Giving up your own identity is quite powerful as well, but it’s not even giving over your identity – it’s more like taking on a new identity. GANGHUT has also got that huge element of childhood fantasy to it as well, where you get to make the things you might have wanted to make when you were a little kid, but you were too wee to make them properly. So it’s about that thing of throwing caution to the wind and being in some ways childish, but obviously being safe at the same time and having all of us together is part of that.

Different GANGHUT members take different responsibilities for projects, or parts of projects. Steve’s taken responsibility for this project really, but just that’s the way it comes about. GANGHUT is democratic in a way, but because we’re all such good friends anyway, it’s very natural. We don’t really talk that much about what we’re doing. Someone will suggest something and then we’ll say ‘oh, that sounds good.’ And I think it’s that idea that doing something is better than doing nothing. I think if we didn’t make art together then we’d do something else together. We’d have a group llama farm or something.

There is that survivalist ideology, or even a utopian thing that we all live in cities and bow down to ‘the men’ or something, but we’re not hippies really. We just love the idea that could try to be self sufficient and to have skills to do that. You know sometimes you feel that even though you’re an artist you don’t really have any skills as such? I’ve learnt so much over the past 5, 6 years doing GANGHUT. I mean, we basically built a house up in Lumsden. So I’m not scared of doing stuff like that any more. I feel like we could more or less build a house to live in, now.

GANGHUT is a different identity, and I think that once you’ve put on the overalls and things… it’s almost like going to your work. It’s about unanimous decisions without making decisions. GANGHUT just happens. We don’t stress that much. It’s fun. It has to be fun, or what’s the point?

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So Why Did You Volunteer To Collaborate With GANGHUT For A Day?

- “Well I’ve known the guys at GANGHUT for a little while and I just wanted to get involved with the project. I heard about this show coming up and I thought it might be good fun.”

- “Likewise. I know a few people involved with GANGHUT and I spotted this on Facebook. It’s nice and handy because I live really close by.”

- “The good thing about collaboration is that different people have different skills, and so you always come out of the process with a new perspective, or with having done something you haven’t done before.”

- “Meeting different people is important too.”

- “I’m interested in how as artists we affect the space around us. I’ve been thinking about how communities and artists live alongside each other, and what the interactions between the two might be.”

- “Everything you’re involved with helps to evolve your own practice, but I don’t think of this [The Elevation Station] as being my own work, really. Does that make sense? It’s related to it, but not it.”

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