Helen Marriage's Public Art Gets Millions To Lighten Up

Helen Marriage’s public art gets millions to lighten up.

- Brad Wieners

Particularly in modern, 21st century life, we’re tempted to believe that everything runs to a timetable. If the train is 10 minutes late, it really matters. We get terribly agitated about the world not behaving. But what I think is that nobody’s life is measured by routine. You don’t remember every day you got the No. 38 bus to work. The things you remember are those special moments when you fell in love, or your kid was born, or you were chosen for the school play, or got a promotion. You remember those moments. And along with a sort of transformation of the urban landscape, what we’re interested in with our company, Artichoke, is interrupting the routine and creating shared joy where people have a memory. And based on the response, we’ve managed this with Lumiere, David Best’s temple in Londonderry, or with The Sultan’s Elephant, which we paraded through London in 2006.

We have a track record now, but many of our projects were rejected for years before we could mount them. And I’ve evolved an understanding of why people say no. It’s fear, mostly, and not wanting to be accountable. Let someone else decide. And although there are no real shortcuts around it, what I’ve found is that if you say something is happening, and I need you to help me, people assume that some other authority has sanctioned your right to do this. Somehow, engaging people in a task rather than seeking permission unlocks the whole thing. They don’t so much say yes as stop saying no.