The artist as travel guide
Jonathan Watkins: How did you decide to make a work about Swansea Jack?
Shimabuku: I went to Swansea the first time over a year ago. I was walking around the coast, The Mumbles and Gower … it was so beautiful. It reminded me a little bit of the South of France, but without the people! It was winter. I hardly saw anyone, but I saw many dogs, wet dogs, dogs who looked like they’d just been swimming in the sea. I was very curious and started to ask if there was some local tradition about dogs swimming. It was then that I heard the story of a dog called Swansea Jack. Born in 1930, he started to rescue people from the sea when only one year old, and he’s saved more than twenty by the time he died, aged seven.
JW: What kind of dog was he?
S: He was a black dog, a retriever …
JW: … a retriever of people … Was he taught to do it?
S: I was told that originally he didn’t like water, and his owner taught him how to swim. He became very good, very quick. And then developed this habit of jumping into the water if he saw someone in trouble…
JW: How did he save them?
S: I am not sure. Maybe he bit them around the neck and dragged them to the shore … or maybe he just gave them something to hang onto. I don’t think he was trained to be a life-saver. He was simply a dog who could swim.
JW: How is he remembered now in Swansea?
S: Very few people in Swansea remember Swansea Jack. He is not thought about very much now. There is a statue that I’ve seen, an obscure monument in a rather isolated place by the sea, but nothing in the city centre. Also there is a pub called Swansea Jack, near to where he used to swim. I went there and saw portraits of dogs and so on, and also a book published about Swansea Jack, now out of print. It is interesting to me that Swansea Jack is not famous today. He was famous, a local hero, but then he began to be forgotten.
JW: It’s typical of you to focus on a marginal subject. For example, you made a film [Man trying to catch a bird with his eyes covered, 2001] about pigeons in Trafalgar Square because they were not so popular. In 2000 you “decided to give a tour of Tokyo to an octopus from Akashi”. You often have animals as the lead characters in stories you develop, animals that normally would be peripheral or in the background. They seem to signify your interest in alien reality, and constitute an analogy for your position as an outsider, a strange stumbling on a very local story …
S: I’m trying to see things from a different point of view, or from a special point of view – through and with animals – in such a way that they become new for everyone. I am very conscious of the fact that there are not only human beings in the world, and any living thing could be my audience. Whatever it is, I’m interested because it’s not me. It’s something happening outside of me. There are trees, buildings, there is the sky … there are animals in the world. I often wonder why people only seem to concern themselves with other people. I like to think that I can deal with anything beyond myself. The possibility of beauty is everywhere.
JW: There is also the theme of the journey, very familiar in your work, leading you to the arrival in some other place. And so not only is there a question of another point of view, but also your desire to be somewhere else. There have been journeys to find animals, such as deer and the Shimafukuro owl, and journeys with animals such as the Akashi octopus …
S: … it’s all about touching something I don’t know. Travel is very important to me, and I always find arriving at an unknown place very beautiful. My relationship with the animals involved is not necessarily one of clear understanding. Rather, it’s a question of misunderstanding in a beautiful way.
JW: Not trying to communicate?
S: Maybe it’s about another aspect of communication. Even in human relationships, between you and me, we’re not sure we really understand each other, but maybe we misunderstand each other beautifully. We could be good friends. On the other hand, there can be a clear and boring understanding.
I am interested in many levels of communication. Some of my earlier works in public locations were made out of paper. They were very vulnerable to being destroyed by pasers-by, but, then, at the same time, I was interested in destructive activity as a positive thing. It was better than nothing happening or having people simply watching.
JW: Your work often involves the documentation of a journey, by video or some other medium, roughly edited so we feel as if we are watching you thinking aloud. Asking you about an exhibition you will “arrive” at, like this one about Swansea Jack, doesn’t make sense until you get there.
S: I know the general direction in which I have to go, but it’s just a direction … I want to be amazed too! This is why I enjoy making art in the way I do, why I’m always working in this way.
JW: It seems to be about you working out what you want to say through the process of making the work. And you’re carrying the audience with you along the way. We imagine what it’s like from your different point of view. That’s why photography and video is so important in your work – there is an undeniable trace of something that has happened, seen from elsewhere. One is a witness to something that was real.
S: It’s true. That’s why in the children’s book I’ve just made [The Cucumber Journey, about travelling to Birmingham from London by narrow boat] I wanted to include photography. It made a link with the real world. It conveyed the fact that something wasn’t just a dream.
JW: How does this relate to your interest in children’s drawings and the child-like nature of your own drawings. Both suggest a communication of seeing something for the first time, and/or a coming to terms with something in an unpractised or unrehearsed way.
S: I feel I don’t have to be so realistic with drawings. Drawings are like dreams of new things, beginning points, and so they are more abstract …
JW: … with not so much detail. There’s an interesting contrast between the drawings and the photographs. The drawn gesture leaves a space in which we imagine the details.
S: Looking at children’s drawings I think is a bit like looking at an elephant in the zoo for the first time. You simply have to accept its existence even if you don’t believe how big it is, how long its nose is and so on. It is possible to assume the existence of something without too much “adult” analysis. You can accept a dream as a dream, a mystery as a mystery, and I like this.
I draw like a child and so people say I draw in a dream-like way but actually, in the end, it becomes true. The real world becomes like a children’s drawing, and the real world becomes like a dream.
JW: That’s reminiscent of Lascaux, for example, where prehistoric people seemed to be drawing things they wanted to come true, as if they were casting spells.
S: The most important thing is to visualize something and then it becomes true.
JW: Swansea Jack is a bit like a child’s drawing, a sketch of something that fulfils an all-too-human need … local people might need a legend for some kind of social cohesion, something to make their town distinct, but possibly they know nothing about it. That’s what made your recent work in Yokohama [a map of sea routes] so interesting. You were showing people how to travel from there by boat but hardly anyone knew that it was possible. Normally they would drive, take a plane or a Shinkansen train. The point you made was that it is more interesting to go another way …
S: I wanted to show people that there are many different ways to reach a single destination. I think if I wasn’t an artist probably I would be a travel guide.
Jonathan Watkins is Director of Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
--------------
This interview is from an exhibition catalog: "Swansea Jack Memorial Dog Swimming Competition"
