Paul Cummins has been responsible for large-scale art installations at Chatsworth House, Derby Royal Hospital, Althorp Estate, Blenheim Palace and the Conran shop.  Now he is known, worldwide, as the artist behind the creation of the 888,246 ceramic poppies that made up the ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’ at the Tower of London. His iconic ‘Weeping Window’ is heading to Liverpool’s to St George’s Hall. We caught up with the Derby-based artist to talk about serendipity, smells and London standing still.

How do you feel about the Weeping Window moving to St George’s Hall?

I’m semi-excited to be truly honest. It’s the only kind of environment where you can go up and touch it.

How did you come up with the concept of creating a sea of poppies?

In 2012 I came across a living will from a lady who’d fought in WW1 and didn’t survive. Every 100 years these things get released, it was just serendipity that I got that. Then I came up with the idea of making a Canadian poppy to celebrate everybody’s life who fought, for our side, in WW1. It basically came from there.

The Tower of London, how did you manage to get that as the location?

At first, I rang around everybody – all the parks  in London. When I rang the Tower of London, by some very strange coincidence, my name was the same as the man who answered the phone to me. From that point on I just started talking and didn’t stop until they told me to come in and have a chat. A few weeks later they said yes. Then I found the money to make the poppies and put them in. It was all strange. It was meant to be
if I’m honest.

Of all things, why choose flowers?

My family were very keen on gardening and botany, it was something we could do together to relax. I got into making flowers from there and over the years I’ve realised that flowers do actually mean things to people, even the smell can drag you back to your childhood. They just evoke so many memories – I try to bring that out in what I do. Let people think what they want to. I don’t like telling people anything, as long as they can see it and have an emotional attachment to it I’m happy.

Why do you think so many people responded to Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red in the way that they did?

I don’t like telling people what things are and when people see one flower for one person, you just don’t have to explain anything to them,  to be honest. People just came and found out that sometimes you can talk to strangers better than your family about things like this. The tower sort of became this space where you could just talk and get to know each other. Social media was such a massive player in this – it went all around the world. It was getting billions of hits a week.

How does it feel to know that one piece of your work has touched the lives of so many
people?

I probably haven’t realised it yet and I probably never will. I just love the idea that you could stop there and think. One week was quite funny, everything got really mad, I think we had 500,000 visitors in one week. Everything in London just stood still – for me that’s probably what made it. Everybody had to just stop and just talk to each other and think. A lot of people just don’t do that anymore. That’s why I think Liverpool might be a really good spot for it because you actually do talk to each other in Liverpool. As a large city
you’re quite vocal and that’s going make it quite interesting, I think.

It must be unusual to see the segments of the sculpture on their own. What is it like to have them moved around separately for people to see?

Each location looks totally different. There’s a brilliant rigging crew that goes along with everything and they literally put it all together – you simply say ‘Can you make it look like this’ and they just do it. Everyone likes doing it. This has been a massive learning curve and a really good experience for me as I’m usually in my
studio in Derby, just me, and I appear every now and then with work. This has been one of those things where I can actually talk to people and  for me that’s probably what I needed. It didn’t belong to me in the end it belonged to everybody else and as they’ve made it look different and done what they wanted to do with it. Everyone’s come into their own ownership of it.

Are you working on any specific projects at the minute?

I probably shouldn’t say… but I am working  on a project for Cancer Research UK. It’s with  a specific flower but I’m not allowed to say any more than that. It will be here in 2017. I never could have imagined that people would take to my work as they did. I’m going to see what I can do because I’ve always attached myself to a
charity to give the profits to and I’m interested  to see how this one goes.

Weeping Window will be at St George’s Hall from November to January 2016

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