Mark Miller Interview with artist Faisal Abdu'allah (18th of August 2010)
In 2007 the artist Faisal Abdu'Allah, was commissioned by Mark Miller, Curator of Youth Programmes at Tate Britain, to work collaboratively with a group of young people (4–16 years) from Park High School in Harrow and St George's RC Westminster to explore ideas related to the commemoration of the 1807 British parliamentary abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. The project, ‘Stolen Sanity’ resulted in a series of large scale photographic portraits that were displayed in the main galleries of Tate Britain. As a collaborative work, Stolen Sanity, integrated the factual historic time line of Tate Britain's display,1807: Blake, Slavery and the Radical Mind, with fictional personal reflections through audio and visual art, revealing contemporary parallels and historic enquiry. This interview, recorded in August 2010, takes the project 'Stolen Sanity' as its starting point to discuss the nature of collaborative practice in learning-based projects that are located within the funding contexts and objectives of cultural diversity work and policy.
Faisal Abdu'Allah graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1993. His work primarily evolves from the interface of photography, the printed image and lens-based installation. He constantly repositions values and ideologies pertaining to representation. He has participated in Sharjah, Torino and Tallinn Biennales and has been the recipient of the Decibel Artist Award in 2005 and is working on a collaborative project with the artist Christian Boltanski. He is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of East London and lives and maintains a studio in London.
Mark Miller is Convenor of Youth Programmes in the Tate Learning Department. From 2006 – 2010 he was Curator of Youth Programmes at Tate Britain and responsible for creating strategies, programmes, projects and events to enable a wider range of young people (13 -25yrs) to access, interact and contribute to British culture through contemporary art practice. At Tate Britain he organized projects such as Portfolio Advice Day, Enslaved, I-Dent fashion projects with Arts Aim Higher and University for the Arts London, as well as Stolen Sanity, working with the artist Faisal Abdu’ Allah and Tate Shift with artist Raimi Gbadamosi. The Youth Programme displays at Tate Britain aimed to reveal the process, value and questions related to collaborative art practice and the role of art as a catalyst for social, cultural, and political engagement.