by Preethi Nair
It was with Michael that my thoughts stayed. It was so wrong not to have been completely honest with him, but I was scared by the extent of the feelings I had for him, scared to expect too much, scared in case I was hurt again. My need not to be hurt overrode everything. Picking up my paintbrush I began to paint black silhouettes and wondered what Ki would make of all of it. When I had finished I put the paintbrush down.
‘Did you see? Do you think it’s all crazy? I can’t quite get my head around any of it, how one thing has led to another and I’m here now, the place where I’ve always wanted to be. I can paint and there’s no one to bother me or to tell me what to do but I still feel alone and I still miss you, there is no happily ever after, is there, Ki? You get what you want and you still think “Is that it?” I think all there is, is making the best of each day. When this exhibition is over I’ll take the buddha over to your mum. Maybe she’ll put it in your room. I want to mess your room up, take everything that’s in it away. I wish I didn’t still miss you like this. A big part of me wants it to stop.’
Matisse’s quote about flowers went around in my head. I thought about the new people who had entered my life in the last few months – Mrs Onoro, Gina, Rooney – and began painting colourful figures between the silhouettes, and when I had finished I didn’t bother washing my hands or brushing my hair, I just went to an empty home.
Over the next few months I made several attempts to speak to Mum and Dad. I even followed my dad’s bus route and waited for him at the bus stop but he closed the doors on me and drove off leaving the other passengers stranded. Being completely cut off from my family I threw myself into a world of my own, painting pictures that I had always wanted to paint, putting down feelings I was unable to express.
Mangetti had commissioned Foruki to do a portrait of him and because I couldn’t go through with the whole sitting thing where Rooney would have to pretend to paint, I said Foruki didn’t feel that a sitting was necessary as he worked from the vibration given off the subject matter. Despite the fact that Mangetti was paying £8000 for the commission I was unable to paint him and just kept painting flowers in all different shapes and sizes. Nothing came to me – the canvas was the only place where I couldn’t fool myself.
There was still no news from Michael. Painting became everything to me; it was the only thing that I knew couldn’t leave me and when I wasn’t in my studio I spent time with Gina and Rooney.
Rooney began playing in Gina’s restaurant and managed to find other venues where he could perform. Gina spent more time on her own work and the world revolved like this until the day Mangetti called and left a message asking me to call him at home.
I always had my phone switched off when I was working in the studio so later that evening I heard the message. I called him back, not even thinking twice about doing it, not like the first time I called him. His assistant picked up the phone and handed it to Mangetti.
‘Hello Tastudi, it’s Nina.’
‘Yes, Nina. How are you?’
‘Very well, thank you.’
‘And how is Foruki doing with my painting?’
‘It’s coming on well,’ I lied.
‘Excellent. I have some good news for Foruki,’ he paused. ‘We have short-listed him for the Turner.’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. There must have been some mistake.
‘Nina, are you still there?’
‘Short-listed?’ I repeated.
‘Indeed.’
‘That’s very good news,’ I managed. The palms of my hands began to sweat.
‘The judges were impressed with his exploration of darkness and light and his attitude towards identity.’
‘They were?’
‘Yes, and they liked this whole idea of bringing art back to the subject matter and not the artist. Meaning no disrespect to Foruki but he makes his point in an understated way and we felt that this year this is what the Turner needed; a little more sobriety than the circus the media turn it into.’
‘Yes it does,’ I replied, not knowing what to say. If he was short-listed it meant press attention on a massive scale. What would we do? ‘To be honest with you, Tastudi, I’m not sure how he will take the news – you know, with the publicity and everything.’
‘We have taken this into account and have briefed the press office. The announcement will be made on June the fourteenth and they’d like you to come in to discuss how you’d like to handle this. So give them a call to arrange a time that is convenient.’
‘I will.’
‘Convey my regards to Foruki and I know he’ll be very busy but we must do lunch soon.’
‘We will,’ I replied, remaining professional. ‘Thank you, Tastudi.’
I hung up. I didn’t know whether to scream with excitement or bury my head. This was serious. I thought it was all over. How were we going to pull this one off? I called up Gina.
‘Gina, are you sitting down?’
‘What’s up, Nina?’
‘Foruki’s been short-listed for the Turner.’
‘No bloody way! … Roon, you’ve been short-listed for the Turner Prize.’
‘Is he there with you, Gina?’
‘Yeah, he’s here. Come round as soon as you can.’
There was a bottle of champagne waiting on the table when I got to Gina’s house.
‘I know I should be happy but I don’t know if I can go through with this once more. I’m only beginning to find some kind of stability and it means more lies and deceit.’
‘Nina, it’s the Turner Prize. This just doesn’t happen. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity and when it’s all over you can come clean or kill him off, it doesn’t really matter.’
‘But Mangetti, I actually like him, I don’t want to lie to him any more.’
‘We’ve come this far, you can’t back out now. What will you say to him?’
‘I’ll tell him the truth. He might even understand.’
‘Think about this. Realistically, Foruki is not going to win. They’ve obviously short-listed him because he’s not controversial and probably tempers all the other artists. They’ve done it for their own self-interest. They wanted someone with a traditional approach and you’ve given that to them – you’re doing them a favour.
‘When it’s all over and if you feel the need to tell Mangetti, tell him – but just do this one more time. Do it for us.’
‘What if they find out?’
‘They haven’t up until now, have they? Artusion was a pretty big venue, nobody found out then, did they?’
‘What if he wins?’
‘He won’t,’ Gina insisted. ‘They’re just doing this to shut some of the critics up but there’s no way he’ll win, let’s be realistic. It’s fixed, they like all that circus stuff, they are not going to choose a painter.’
‘And if he does win?’
‘Then that would be mad.’
Rooney agreed with Gina and asked me to see it through as we had got that far.
The only reason why I would go through with it again was because I had become increasingly insular in my own world and I wanted to feel the bond and the sense of excitement the three of us had created the first time we brought Foruki to life.
‘Let’s do it,’ I said, opening the champagne.
Kendal Brown’s offices were reopened the following week and the phone line activated. I met with the Tate’s press office to give them more information about Foruki. His résumé was brief and had the main biographical details and a list of some obscure galleries in Japan that Gina had put together where he had supposedly exhibited. The coordinator said that they needed more to work with. ‘The main point to stress about Foruki,’ I reiterated, ‘is his desire for anonymity and that the focus has to be on his work.’
‘It is going to be fairly difficult to maintain his privacy as the press always want to interview the artist and Channel Four do a six-minute presentation about the artist and their work which is aired the evening of the p
rize-giving.’
‘Is that obligatory?’ I asked, stunned. How the hell were we going to do that?
‘All the artists normally participate, even the ones who are media shy. We find the less information you give the press, the more they want, so I would advise Foruki to partake in the documentary.’
How could I have Rooney on national TV talking about his concepts? ‘I’ll try to talk him into it,’ I replied.
‘It would be for the best as his privacy is so guarded you don’t want him to stand out.’
The press shots I handed over were photographs that Gina had taken of Rooney wearing a cap and enormous sunglasses. ‘These are the only shots he’ll allow you to use,’ I said handing them over to the PR lady.
The day the short-list was officially announced, journalists began calling for specific details.
‘The more I don’t tell you about Foruki, the more you’ll want to know; this is the point he’s trying to make, that the artist is bigger than the subject matter.’ I was using reverse psychology so they would feel that Foruki was so up himself that they weren’t going to bother finding out anything more about him. I also slipped in some personal details that would feed their insatiable curiosity, like his father abandoning him which had marked his psyche at a very young age, beginning the journey of the search for identity and the sense of self.
I tried to field their questions without sounding too evasive but there was a journalist called Richard Morris from the Guardian who was much more tenacious and wouldn’t let it go.
‘Miss Savani, the galleries where Foruki claims to have exhibited in Japan haven’t heard of him.’
My mouth went dry – of course they wouldn’t have heard of him – but I was prepared for this question. ‘Of course they haven’t heard of him. When he’s in his own country he goes under different pseudonyms. It’s never about him, it’s his art. In fact he doesn’t even like doing exhibitions and the only way he will show his work is to go under different names.’
‘So let me get this right. He has done no major exhibitions anywhere in the world and he suddenly decides to go in for the Turner, and this is a man who is media shy?’
‘The only reason why he was persuaded to enter the Turner Prize was that it would be a platform for the statement he is trying to make on the nature of identity and celebrity in today’s media-frenzied culture. Everyone is so obsessed as to who is behind the art that the art gets overlooked. He is trying to find authenticity in fakeness. Judge Foruki by the paintings he does and not the man he is. I have another call waiting, Mr Morris, I really must go,’ I said, trying to get rid of him. ‘If you have any more questions, give me a call.’ I put the phone down, incredibly nervous about what he might unearth if he dug a little deeper, but I put these thoughts to the back of my mind while I tried to concentrate on what exactly Foruki would put together for the exhibition at the Tate.
Richard Morris called again later that evening.
It’s the weasel, I thought as soon as I heard his turgid voice. Didn’t he have anything better to investigate?
‘You say, Ms Savani, that you left Whitter and Lawson so you could bring Foruki over to London.’
‘That’s right,’ I replied, sitting upright in my chair.
‘Why is it that your former boss, Simon Lawson, says that he had to let you go because you were on the verge of a breakdown?’
Simon wouldn’t have said that, I knew he wouldn’t have, even if he wasn’t impressed by my behaviour when I left. But how else would the weasel have known? What if Simon had said that?
‘There was a conflict of interest between the two of us, he’s hardly going to praise me for leaving.’ Yes, that was a good answer; that would cover it.
‘And you say you went to Japan in May 1998 and that is where you stumbled upon your chap Foruki?’
Breathe, Nina, breathe. ‘That’s right.’
‘Why is it that Mr Lawson has no recollection of you going to Japan at that time?’
I began to sweat. I took a deep breath and thought of the best thing I could think of. ‘It was hardly something that I was going to broadcast to my boss – what I do in my personal time has nothing to do with anyone else.’
‘So you’re still not prepared to grant me the first interview with Foruki?’
‘As I have said, Foruki doesn’t court publicity and therefore I am unable to do this.’
‘Right,’ he replied.
The way he said ‘right’ made me feel incredibly uneasy. ‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’ I asked in a vain attempt to show him that he had not unnerved me.
‘No, that’s all for now,’ he replied. ‘No doubt we will speak again soon.’
I called Gina straightaway. She told me not to worry, that all journalists tried it on; it was their job. But I wasn’t reassured; he wasn’t like the other journalists who I had spoken to. I got the sense that he could see through me; he made me feel as if he knew that I hadn’t told the truth and was waiting to see how long it would take before I snapped.
Thinking about Richard Morris and what he might write the next day worried me and I was unable to sleep: he had the power to ruin us – not just us, but ruin Mangetti’s reputation. Every time I wanted to call Mangetti and tell him everything, I called Gina instead.
The following morning, Gina and Rooney came around to my flat with the articles that had appeared. ‘See, nothing at all to worry about, Nina.’
THE NONCONTROVERSIAL SHORT-LIST
The only thing that is controversial about this year’s Turner Prize is its noncontroversy. The four short-listed are a sober mix of artists: Steve Carey from Leeds sculpts nudes with garden fences; Londoner Amanda Finley models still-life using fabrics; Foruki, a British-born Japanese media-shy painter, whose work is about identity; and finally, photographer Matthew Perring from Durham whose photography captures speed and motion …
ENIGMA SURROUNDING SHORT-LISTED ARTIST
The only thing slightly controversial about this year’s Turner Prize is the identity of one of the short-listed artists. Foruki, a British-Japanese artist, refuses to reveal his real identity as a matter of principle. Identity is one of the main statements he makes through his work and he is vehement about his art being at the fore rather than himself …
‘It’s just crazy,’ Gina said as she read.
‘Are you having doubts?’ I asked.
‘Absolutely not,’ she replied. ‘There’s so much we can do here.’
My fears were allayed as I read on and nothing untoward had been written. Perhaps I knew it was naïve to think that he would let it go just like that but I wanted to be lulled into a false sense of security. I wanted to believe everything would work out because there was no time to dwell on what could potentially go wrong; there was only three months before the Channel 4 documentary was due to be filmed and I had a series of new pictures to paint for the exhibition at the Tate, all around the theme of identity. The biggest irony was I finally knew who I was but was doing one of the biggest exhibitions I would ever do for someone who did not exist.
For the next few months I was absorbed with my pictures. The first piece I did was a six-foot canvas with the famous image of Marilyn Monroe trying to hold down her white dress, but instead of using her head I painted a faint Japanese face. It was Mrs Onoro’s face.
This piece took me weeks and after it was completed I took out another enormous canvas and painted it white.
I was going to have an elaborate gold frame around it. In the middle I painted the words ‘self-portrait’ in bold black letters and then signed it Foruki. On the next canvas I painted an abstract Rooney, changing his face slightly each time so by the fifth canvas his face completely dissolved and all that was left were segments of the colours used to paint the face.
The third canvas had an explosion of loud, vibrant paint. I was trying to capture the madness of what had happened in the last six months. The picture was of a rush-hour scene in the morning with a sea of commuters
trying to get to work. Behind them all, on an underground poster, was a woman who was painting a picture of a man.
And the final piece in this collection was of an old man holding a newborn baby – only in these two phases of our lives do we not care who we are or what we have.
When the pictures were finally completed I let Rooney and Gina come to the studio.
‘The first two are quite calculated. I thought we needed to make a strong statement about the nature of identity, and the next two … I don’t know what they are about, it was just an emotion I had.’
‘They’re absolutely beautiful, Nina,’ Gina said studying them. ‘Really beautiful.’
The three of us spent hours discussing what each of the paintings meant and how to present it in a form palatable to Channel 4. Gina said she would prep Rooney and work on all his mannerisms so this would leave me free to take care of whatever else needed to be done.
The two of them had become very close: he was virtually living with her but he hadn’t formally taken the step of moving in because he didn’t want to upset Mrs Onoro, although I thought that she would have been delighted. They were good together – they joked about together a lot and he understood her. Being around Gina had changed Rooney considerably; he had become very self-confident and incredibly decisive. Gina also believed in herself a lot more because of the support he provided. Sometimes I was envious; not because they had found each other but because it reminded me of what I possibly could have had with Michael.
A few weeks before the curators were due to arrive I went into the office and dealt with all the admin and the queries from journalists all around the world. I did stop to think about the madness but when I did that I got the jitters and wanted to call Mangetti and tell him that there had been a terrible mistake. How I could class a blatant lie as a mistake I didn’t know, and so the only way my conscience would allow me to reconcile the whole scenario was by treating Foruki as if he really were my client, and this being the case I endeavoured to do my best for him.