INTERVIEW Jul 2025 ‘Chila Kumari Burman: I Love You Southport’ at The Atkinson 

Jo Manby

Writers of fiction describe how their characters are closely tied to setting and in the same fashion, people are forged in the crucible of place. Where they grew up, where they played, where they went to school, where they first worked, where they made their first friends. Artists often absorb early experiences and memories and these can become infused in both the processes they employ and the finished works they produce. The famed J M W Turner obsessively recorded the British coastline in its most tempestuous incarnations, including at Margate, hometown of Tracey Emin. Emin’s My Bed (1998) was exhibited alongside Turner’s watercolours of the sea at Turner Contemporary in 2017 in a pairing that sidestepped convention and upturned the 200-odd years that separate the two artists in real time.

Now Southport, on the Sefton coast north of Liverpool, has its own prodigal daughter in Chila Kumari Burman, who has sent a beautiful, glittering and colourful love letter from her East London studio to her hometown, an embodiment of a billet-doux in exhibition form that embraces Indian myth, symbolism and deities, the allure of the funfair and the discos of the 1970s and 80s, and that represents key phases of her artistic career. With ‘Chila Kumari Burman: I Love You Southport’, she proclaims her fondness of and gratitude for the place – and correspondingly, the people of Southport.

Chila Kumari Burman was born in Bootle in Liverpool to a Punjabi Hindu family and grew up in a working class Liverpudlian community. Her father emigrated from Kolkata (previously Calcutta), India, in 1954, and was later joined by Chila’s mother and her two older siblings. She studied at Southport School of Arts and Crafts on Mornington Road and graduated with a degree from Leeds Polytechnic before studying a Fine Art MA at the Slade in London.

the Fourdrinier editor Jo Manby was fortunate enough to interview Chila Kumari Burman after meeting her at The Atkinson, and discuss with her the sights, sounds, smells and feel of the seaside town which permeate her life and work. Until 15 November visitors can visit the exhibition ‘Chila Kumari Burman: I Love You Southport’ for free and bask in the sensory delights of a wide-ranging body of work by the artist.

https://theatkinson.co.uk/exhibition/chila-burman/

Jo Manby: It was great to meet you at The Atkinson and hear about your work. Can you tell me about the way your childhood experiences of Southport, with your dad as an ice cream man on the coastline, has influenced your work, which appears so infused with childlike fun and delight in colour, glitz and glamour – like you find on a seaside pier or fairground?

Chila Kumari Burman: It’s not so much the glitz and the glamour. Because my dad had the van, with the Bengal Tiger on, I was about six I suppose when he had the tiger, it kind of influences your state of mind as a child. And my dad sold ice cream on Birkdale beach for years, and I used to have to clean the van every night (laughs) and eat all the chocolate flakes! So, I didn’t have any time for my own work; it has an impact on your studies and my dad being tired, and my mum sending him off to the pub so he could calm down – because it must have been very hard because of the noise of the ice cream making machines being very loud and having to speak over the noise of the van to the customers.

He’d tell me to put the plug in for the machines otherwise everything would melt. So, you have to clean the ice cream van machines. He dismantles it and leaves it in the laundry and I’d start washing it. Then my mum’d give me a fiver and say ‘Go the pub’, and I’d drop him off at the pub about half past eight, he plays darts and about elevenish he’d come home, and by then I’d have cleaned the van. So doing this every night, Monday to Friday, then at weekends, I’d make his sarnies, and our Billy’d help on the beach and I’d have to flatten all the cardboard cornet boxes and crisp boxes and lolly ice boxes – just flatten them. You’d have to sit next to the van and do that all day.

JM So quite a lot of grafting at a young age?

CKB A lot of grafting at a young age. Though I say that, I mean I could have as many ice creams, as much diet coke, as many choc ices, anything I wanted. And when it gets to when the sun goes down, so maybe half six-ish, he then goes round the streets in Bootle and Crosby, selling more, and I used to go with him. I’m sitting on the ledge where he serves from. So, then we’re back home and he goes off to the pub again and I’m cleaning the van again. It is pretty much full on and I have to do that on Sunday as well. He gets up earlyish and then I start making his sandwiches. He’s preparing the van, because all those bits for the ice cream making machine, they have to be put together. He also had stock in the garage. Those long fridge freezers that came out in the 60s and 70s. And usually at weekends he’d sell out the stock, so I’d have to drive, in a lovely big Audi, from Freshfield beach to Toxteth to the ice cream factory, stock it all up with ice cream and more cornets and lolly ices. And that ice cream factory was run by three Indian uncles. So, something more like a cooperative which they set up near [what is now] the Liverpool Biennial.

You were asking about the glamour of the pier and the funfair. I did used to go to the funfair. We used to go to Blackpool funfair all the time. Because whenever relatives came over from India, we’d take them to Blackpool and the adults would drop us off at the funfair and they would go walking round the coastal roads, so I must have got a lot of ideas from Blackpool funfair – and that is glitz and glamour and kitsch. I probably went to funfairs in Southport. Generally not with the family. But I was telling Charlotte [Charlotte Buckingham, Marketing Manager at The Atkinson] and the team that I really liked this game at Southport funfair where you chucked all these balls in a hole, and horses would run across and if you got a lot of balls, and you totted the numbers up, you’d get a present, or another free go. [The game ‘Grand National’, named after the famous horserace at Aintree in north Liverpool]. And sometimes if my mum was going to the library and we were in Southport, I started to do that regularly. Like a kind of childhood gambling!

What was also glitzy was the Temple. And also I watched a lot of Bollywood films from the age of seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. The early films are quite full of glamour and colours, and all stuff like that – stunning movies. And then you’ve got the ice cream van, you’ve got Bollywood movies, and the Temple in the Botanical Gardens.

JM Is it not there anymore?

CKB It’s in a church now, I don’t know the name of the church or what street it’s on. Because, remember, I wasn’t allowed to go out into Liverpool the whole time I was growing up, because they were strict on me, so I wouldn’t know how to find my way around, apart from where the ice cream factory was, you’d kind of follow your nose, you’d have done it so many times you couldn’t get lost.

JM Have you ever been involved in performance art? If so, can you tell me about it – and if not, why not, as your work seems so infused with energy and life and movement, but also physical embodiment, thinking of the bodyworks like Belly Jiggle?

CKB In Lynda Nead’s book Beyond Two Cultures, in the back section, it’s me at the ICA [Institute of Contemporary Arts, London] and there’s painted a mural in the background and I’ve got this mask on and I’ve made a fruit sculpture in the middle of the room. And I got everybody to eat it and I was giving out to everyone free cornets with nothing in them to fill them up with fruit, so I would say it was a performance, but I would never call myself a performance artist. When I did Belly Jiggle, my friend said to me if you join [all the prints] together, they would look like a dance, and she’s got a point actually. When I was doing my body prints, I was asked to do a project on texture. I didn’t want to do potato cut outs. I didn’t want to do rubbings. So, I thought, let’s just do my body, because when it gets cold, as you know you get goosepimples on your body and your nipples go erect, and I just thought, if this doesn’t make me a good body print, I don’t know what – it was for ‘Women in Revolt’. I wasn’t revolting against anything. All I was revolting about was I don’t want to do potato prints or rubbings, so now it’s seen as a feminist piece. Because the art world put their own views on stuff.

JM Do you consciously set out to appeal to the senses with your work, it comes across as so sensual and the colours are so edible looking, like Indian sweets or jellies or colourful icing, or does all this just come naturally?

CKB Half the time, I don’t know – it just comes out like that. I don’t really plan everything, because I can’t work like that. I’ll send you images of the Turtle I’ve just done for an auction for Prince William’s trust. It’s just gone to Kensington Palace and it’s also going to Covent Garden. You’ll see that it’s very sensual. But I do think, that now you’ve mentioned the word sensual, I probably do that subconsciously.

JM It’s almost like automatic, it seems – it’s not like a big conscious thing really.

CKB I don’t think I’ve made anything consciously. I think I’d get bored with that.

JM You spoke at The Atkinson about spontaneity just being the way that you work.

CKB I just follow my nose, do you know. When I first used to make my work, I used to think, well, if nobody likes it, well what can you do? Do it for yourself. You sort of do it in your studio, you don’t even know [how it will be received].

Some pieces in The Atkinson, some of the etchings, are from my collages, a photo-etching process. So I might think, how about turning my collages into photo etchings. And there’s this friend who knows how to make photo etchings. I’ve done them before at Leeds, I kind of know what I want. Compton Verney wanted some new etchings. They needed to have a lot of black and white stuff so I thought, let’s do these etchings. And some of these are of my body. Some are close-up shots of those body prints you saw in ‘Women in Revolt’, a digital process of making etchings.

I thought it would be good to have some new pieces so I made 12 etchings for Compton Verney. I went to Southport Art College and I made my first etching there. And the tutors at Southport Foundation course said you should go to Leeds Polytechnic, because it’s the best place to do print making – silk screen, lithography, so it was their idea for me to go to Leeds Poly. And my mum and dad wouldn’t let me leave home but then our cousin’s sister lived in Dewsbury.

JM So did you stay there?

CKB No, I had to stay in digs in Chapeltown. It was the days of Peter Sutcliffe. But she would come and see me from time to time. She was really chilled. And then when that finished and I went to the Slade, there was Aunty Babs who worked in Wormwood Scrubs as a nurse. So that was why I was fine about going to London and going to the Slade. Thank god for these two relatives who were there. They saved my life.

JM Do you feel that your art has the power to unite people? It certainly seems to radiate hope, joy and love. Do you hope that it has this effect, to draw people together?

CKB Kind of. It’s in my mind all the time. I think it came about, joy, hope and celebration, when I was asked to do the Tate Britain façade. The only reason I was worried then was because I thought, well, it was called the Tate Britain Winter Commission. And I thought, with this Covid thing that’s around now: we’re all going to go into darkness. Darkness in the world like going into a dark tunnel. And I thought we’ve got to come out the other end. I thought, when I make these neons, for the Tate Britain Winter Commission, I was using words like hope, and joy and love – and Indian deities and the tiger on my dad’s ice cream van, and a neon of an ice cream van with the words ‘we are here because you are there’ which is at the ICA now.

And ‘without us there is no Britain’ and the drawing of the girl with the teacup in her hand. There was all this about slave labour, people had to pick tea, so the British who were in India, the British Empire, could drink lovely tea. I thought, I’ve got to do my own take on that. Then there’s the four pillars on the Tate Britain façade. Alex Farquharson just said, ‘Do what you want to do’, so I started to think: they call it an imperial building. I’m not exactly sure of the date it was built but in my book there’s a section on neons and there’s a brilliant woman, Frances Spalding, who’s written that neon section, and she explains the history of when Tate Britain was erected. And that would give you an insight really.

I knew I wanted a neon of me doing a jump. A martial arts move. And there’s one of Lakshmibai of Jhansi. She took on the British in 1845. There’s a whole series about her on Netflix. I kept watching the episodes… the story goes in history she had this horse that she’d whistle to in the middle of the night, and she’d get on the horse; and she was married to a king when she was 14 years old. She’d go in the middle of the night and she’d try and lop the heads off some of the British who were ruling India. She became my heroine.

When I was making the Tate piece, every episode that I watched was getting me going, you know. Thinking, yeah. There was a film I made in my studio which is called Candy Pop and Juicy Lucy (2007), when you watch that film, it sounds very upbeat. Then you get all these dancers. One of these dancers, I’ve done a neon of. I wanted these girls at the top to be very energetic. In drawing form. When I made the neons they were quite energetic. If you made it and it had a non-energetic vibe, then it wouldn’t really make people feel energized. Because people need energy in their lives. Everyone was feeling down and out. People came up to me and said ‘You’ve really put joy into our lives. We thought we might lose our jobs.’

We saw people crying, we saw people having Tinder dates on the steps of the Tate façade, people having parties, birthday parties, and students not knowing what to do because they were just fed up of being in their flats, and the general atmosphere. I didn’t know it was going to be so popular. I think when you do public art commissions. I have many of them. I did do Liverpool Town Hall after that. But you just really want it to look good. And make it balanced, so that it wasn’t just a mess. It took me from April to November, when they switched it on. And I was very lucky to get a commission. I got a lot of publicity from it. And that’s how I’m known as a light artist, as a result of that.

JM And does that suit you, being known as a light artist?

CKB I think it does, because I don’t mind actually – I love light, and I get commissions, make a living from that. And sell to other people that the Tate have got. I suppose once my show at Tate Liverpool has happened, then maybe the prices of my works will escalate. People might say we better get her now before they go really big. And I want to do some paintings. Apart from the body works at The Atkinson, there’s not really many paintings. There’s a nice one Jemma [Jemma Tynan, curator at The Atkinson] chose, the AO piece. It’s got oil pastel on it and then the stickers. Jemma’s got a really good eye.

JM I thought the curation of the show was really good.

CKB It’s immaculate. Genius. She knew exactly what was going to fit, exactly what she wanted, she went to see Compton Verney, then I said did she want to consider these pieces and she’d say, yes. We worked side by side. And Charlotte with the press is a genius too. So that I couldn’t have asked for anything better.

JM Were they good to work with? They’re a great team.

CKB And also because as I said in my talk, my life’s come full circle. Also after the murders, it leaves you speechless about what the families must be feeling. So I hope they can come and get some joy from it, some pleasure, that it’ll uplift their spirits. Because that got completely out of hand. In a quiet place like Southport, on the news. Southport, Formby, the whole lot – that’s unheard of, that kind of stuff.

JM I loved your description of a bunch of young northern girls blowing glass at Sunderland Glass Centre with you. Thinking of your involvement in women’s empowerment and Asian women in particular, were you brought up to think politically? Did your family bring you up to be politically aware?

CKB You know when you went to IWMN, did you hear my dad talk? A lot of that was him talking politics. A neighbour was doing something for a sociology degree, adult education, and she asked my dad loads of questions and I kept the cassette tape. So my dad was quite political already. We were always watching the news and listening. My sister had a boyfriend who gave me a poster of Angela Davis. I must have been 10 when I put that up in my bedroom. I think I knew a bit about the Black Panther Movement and Angela Davis’s politics then.

But if you think about it, as a girl, or as a woman, or teenager, you don’t really think politically or feministically. The boys at school, the grammar only had boys in the Sixth Form, that’s just the way you had to think. If you’ve got brothers in the family. If someone says your stupid – you just have to be on the alert. I had to be tough with my brothers. My big brother was always taking the rise out of something. If I was having a cup of tea before catching the train in the morning, he’d say, ‘that egg custard is going to put 10lbs on you’. Just a wind up you know. So that’s politicising yourself.

I was a bit of a tomboy. If the boys were playing football after school, I wanted to play football. Me and our Billy in the youth club that we could go to every Thursday, down the road in Formby. We always won the dancing. We were the only brown faces there. So I must have been quite fit, running round the room with the strobe light on, dancing. We did everything athletic. Netball, hockey, long jump and sprinting. And shot putt. I wanted to be good at all of it. And later Martial Arts and tennis.

I do think you have to be quite physically active. I mean women are now more than ever. Going to classes, going to the gym. But there’s too much emphasis on body image. It’s gone the other way now. Everyone’s supposed to look size eight. I do see girls of eighteen who are a size eight. One girl who used to help me out, she said, ‘I was thinking of going thinner.’ I thought, you’re only doing this because you feel you ought to.

JM There seems to be a balance in your work between calmness and its binary opposite – fun, excitement and even chaos. Also, you have mentioned the spontaneous way in which you make your art. How do you tread a balanced path between calm and excitement as an artist?

CKB The only way you can do that is – I swim a lot. If I feel that everything’s going nuts, I just go for a swim. Because it calms everything. And if I’ve got enough money I’ll go and have a swim and a massage. Then in the morning you’re just clear-headed and ready to go. You’ve just got to know how to keep yourself balanced. Eat well, exercise well, drink loads of water. It’s about sleep and calm. Not calm as in you’re in a meditation zone. You’ve got to be a bit excited about life! You only live once. Life’s too short. You’ve got to enjoy it. I think you’ve got to say at the end of the day or the beginning of the day, I’ve got to enjoy this day.

This interview is supported by The Atkinson