Artist and social historian Nicola Green is interviewed by Professor Martin Kemp during the final weeks of Nicola Green’s solo exhibition ‘Unity’, filmed at Zuleika Gallery, Woodstock, Oxfordshire. The exhibition 'Unity' includes Nicola’s iconic works related to the time when the artist witnessed, first hand, Barack Obama’s meteoric rise to power as the first African-American President of the United States in 2008. Special thanks to Martin Kemp, Professor Emeritus of the History of Art, University of Oxford. Film by Guy Oliver for Zuleika Gallery.
“In essence, ‘In Seven Days…’ is a story of achieving something impossible, and while I was making it I was thinking about my children and what their generation would be wanting to achieve, and I wanted to make a series of work where they could refer back to a period in time where everybody thought something was impossible, would not happen, did happen, and thinking about how that’s achievable and I think in a way that’s the function of a good museum it that is allows us to revisit and learn from our history and learn from what we have already done, and then I think it (art) really does make a difference”.
“Does art in the moment change anybody’s mind, make any progress, contribute in any substantive way, I think is the question. I think where it really makes a difference is over a long period of time. The way I see it is what we know about our past mostly comes from art and sculptural objects, our cultural objects that we’ve made, and I guess that’s why I'm interested in making work that is a kind of witness now that will carry on inspiring".
