Stuart Semple: I’ve met people who say they got to the steps of Tate Britain and were scared to walk up them

British artist Stuart Semple has spent the past two decades challenging assumptions about who art is for, where it belongs, and what it can do. Known for his vivid pigments, unauthorised public works and open-access approach to materials, his practice often pushes against the boundaries of the gallery space, making art that is as much about access and emotion as it is about aesthetics. His latest work, Bloom, a sea of 5,000 bioplastic flowers installed at Jersey Zoo to mark the Gerald Durrell centenary, was designed to be encountered by anyone, without barriers, in a setting shaped by conservation, not convention.

In this conversation, Semple reflects on the cultural shame he felt growing up, what we lose when working-class voices are excluded from the cultural landscape, and art as public function.

I’m really happy with how Bloom turned out. It’s been a year in the making, and then suddenly it’s there; finished. There’s always a strange moment after something like that, where you go a bit flat. I wouldn’t say depressed exactly, but you do feel a bit low. You’ve been living with this thing for so long, and now it’s out of your hands. There’s a gap. But I’m really happy with what it looked like, and with the way people responded to it. That’s the point of public art – to start a dialogue, to help people think about something.

When we were installing, people were looking through the fence, trying to figure out what was going on. One woman was absolutely amazed: “It’s so beautiful,” she said, and then she saw the sculptures and said, “Oh, they’re not real.” I said, “No, they are real.” She goes, “No, they’re artificial.” And I said, “They’re real sculptures.” And you could almost hear the cogs clicking. It was just a different kind of real. That’s the moment it worked.

That kind of encounter matters to me. It goes right back to when I was growing up; a working-class kid by the beach. My parents wanted me to be a doctor. In my mum’s mind, artists died in garrets. So it wasn’t exactly encouraged. But I went to art school, and I remember going to a gallery in London, looking at a piece of work, and someone shouted, “Get your filthy hands off my wall.” I felt so ashamed. That feeling stayed with me. Because surely when Van Gogh made those sunflowers, he wasn’t trying to exclude anyone from the experience.

Stuart Semple in front of "Bloom" at Jersey Zoo. Image credit (c) Stuart Semple Studio

Art helped me massively as a teenager; without it, I probably wouldn’t be here and I know how powerful it can be. I don’t like the idea that anyone’s excluded from it, if they want to participate in it. But the reality is, they are.

Only 10% of people working in the arts now come from working-class backgrounds

I dropped off 50 Art Aid kits to schools in central London recently, full of materials, because only 10% of people working in the arts now come from working-class backgrounds. And in schools, 50% fewer kids are taking arts subjects at GCSE. That’s just tragic. If that keeps going, we’ll keep hearing the same kinds of voices again and again. There’s nothing wrong with work made by privileged people, but I want to see work by everybody. And that starts by showing people that it’s possible. Maybe that means taking art out of the white-walled gallery, out of those environments. Maybe it means putting it in a zoo. Maybe it means showing up online. We have to bring it to people in a non-confrontational way, and without dumbing it down.

But we’ve got a real issue here. I think the working class has fed its own myth so much that it’s become really inept – culturally. And that worries me. There’s a working-class kid I met recently – 15 years old – and he’d just been to the cinema for the first time in his life. So that means he’s probably never been to a gallery. Probably never been to the theatre. The books in his school library have chapters missing. They’re abridged. That’s the level we’re talking about.

In the art world, I’m not seeing class anywhere near the agenda. I think 90% of the population is being excluded from certain types of culture. And what’s even more perverse is that many people are now rejecting culture before they’ve even had access to it. They don’t feel like it’s for them. There’s this shift in the art itself, too – away from things that are representational, things you can understand straight away – to more conceptual work, and people go, “Maybe that’s not for me. Maybe I need a degree to get this.” They don’t want to look stupid. And so they step back.

I’ve met people who say they got to the steps of Tate Britain and were scared to walk up them. Physically scared. Because they’d never done that before. That fascinates me. Because for me, it’s completely normal. I spend all day there. I have a great time. I look at everything. But for a lot of people, it’s intimidating and I think that’s a conversation we need to have.

Art, to me, can be so many things. It can be for art’s sake, it can be something beautiful that lives above your sofa and makes you smile in the morning when you make your tea. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it can also hold a mirror up to the world. Picasso painted Guernica to say, “Never again.” Or it can be direct – it can actually do something. That’s what I’m interested in: using art to do something. To have a practical function.

Like when I worked with the homeless community in my hometown, we changed the hostile benches. We decorated them, made artworks around them, and it changed the way people saw the homeless population in the city. That’s a direct use of art. And yeah, maybe it’s activism, because it seeks change.

The ugly little blob in the background of an ecosystem might be the thing that makes the whole thing work.

That carries into the conservation work I’m doing now. I’ve always been passionate about the environment. I love the animals. I can’t tell you how much I love the animals. Gerald Durrell lived just a couple of streets from me in Bournemouth. He loved all the animals, even the weird, ugly ones that people didn’t want to see in zoos. He was ahead of his time. He understood that the ugly little blob in the background of an ecosystem might be the thing that makes the whole thing work.

In this recent project, I finally had the platform to make a statement about that. I’ve always been conscious of ecology in my work, but this was the first time I could bring together the chemistry and the design and actually do something with it. We used a bio-resin made from corn. Through that, we’ve proven 5,000 times over that we don’t really need plastic anymore. In a way, I think that made quite a strong point: there are other ways to do things.

I’m thinking a lot at the moment about temporariness. About the idea that we cling to permanence. That art should be immortal, that our ego should be remembered even after we die, that the object is sacred. But the world isn’t like that. Nothing is permanent. Everything’s always moving. And there’s this tension between wanting to save species, wanting to preserve things, and the knowledge that, eventually, everything goes.

So I’m working on a new series of paintings called Mortal. I’ve been developing pigments that have a life.

These paintings die in a hundred years. Halfway through, they erupt in different colours; they have life stages. You might not see what happens to them, but maybe your kids will. I’m thinking about time differently now. And I think that’s one of the big challenges especially with conservation. We’re asking people to care about things that don’t affect them now. That might not even affect their kids. And we’re living in a world where people expect delivery in ten minutes. So asking them to think long-term, generationally, is hard.

But that’s what art can do. It’s the thing that transcends categories. It’s not science, or legislation, or commerce, but it can speak to all of them. It’s the emotional language that ties it all together. When you approach an artwork, you surrender to what it’s offering. You have to look outwards. You have to consider something beyond your own needs. That’s compassion. And it’s the same feeling I get when I see a Rothko as when I watch an incredible sunset. Same physical, human emotion. Same sense of awe.

Nature’s generous. And art’s generous. So they’re the same thing. Art is nature expressing itself, isn’t it? We’re nature. We make things.

And I suppose, just to say it clearly: art should be for everyone. That’s the point of all of it. And when it comes to conservation – the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom – they can’t advocate for themselves. They don’t have a voice. They need human beings to do that. Desperately.

This conversation took place on 13 June 2025 and has been edited and condensed for clarity and flow.

Main image/ (c) Ari Semple. Bloom flowers: Stuart Semple

Connecting the Dots

Can a zoo be a space for public art?

Skylark partner, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust commissioned Bloom to mark the centenary of its founder, Gerald Durrell. The installation sits at the centre of Jersey Zoo and is part of Durrell’s wider education and engagement work.

durrell.org

What happens when a teenager grows up thinking art isn’t for them?

Only 10% of people working in the arts come from working-class backgrounds. Art Aid distributes free art materials to schools across the UK, helping young people access creative tools early.

 artaid.org.uk

What does it mean to make something designed to disappear?

The materials used in Bloom were chosen for their ability to break down, not last. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation explores how circular design and biodegradable materials can shape systems rooted in regeneration, not permanence.

ellenmacarthurfoundation.org