Bethany Marett

Bethany Marett in her studio, photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Could you start off by telling me a bit about yourself?

Bethany Marett:  So I grew up in Preston, Lancashire, and I actually studied History of Art for my undergraduate degree at York. But after working in galleries, I decided I wanted to be on the other side and to be an artist rather than art historian. That was my excuse to move to London and do fine art. 10 years ago I did a summer foundation course at the Slade, which was really intensive and was just amazing. I couldn't afford to do another BA so I took different art courses in London and joined a printmaking studio and was elected to join a printmaking cooperative. I worked independently until I went to the Royal College of Art and did Print for my Masters in 2016. Since then I've had a studio at Thames-Side for the past two years, it’s near Woolwich in London. My work is a mixture of sculpture, print, and photography.

DA:  Were you making work throughout that time, when you were studying art history?

BM:  Yeah, but quite different work because I wasn't really involved in the contemporary art scene. I had more traditional influences. I've always done life drawing and I find that really underpins my practice. Definitely the theme of bodies has always been there. I didn't really start making sculpture or more abstract work until the Slade.

DA:  It's so different when you're making without that critical framework or understanding of what else is out there. It's amazing that you made that leap from history of art and you came to making art.

BM:  It was quite difficult at first, because having studied History of Art, initially it felt like everything had already been done. You've got this whole weight of art history on your back, and also as we only really studied up to the 1980s, contemporary art is a whole different world.

DA:  Only going up to the 80s feels like ancient history! Would you be able to say a bit more about your practice? So you've already mentioned it’s connected to bodies, but could you elaborate on that?

BM:  I describe myself as multidisciplinary because I do work in quite a lot different mediums. I'm quite driven by material and I'm interested in process. Coming from a printmaking background, there are a lot of processes there and I enjoy that technical side of things. My prints are quite different to my sculptural work, they are much more figurative. With the sculpture I feel much more free to be more abstract. The body is a link to everything, skin, this idea of vulnerability, sensuality. It's always coming from quite a personal place. I usually use myself to make my work by casting my own body. Bodies and people are endlessly fascinating and in particular your relationship with your own body is always changing.

‘Hunk’ 2020, Plaster and resin

30cm x 26cm x 28cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  So true. What initially drew you to making work about the body?

BM:  I think it's a combination of things and maybe an innate squeamishness? The human condition and the reality of our mortality; what we see is our skin but below that, you're made of flesh and bone and veins. There’s a tension there. Also coming from quite a religious background, definitely there’s some repression. I'm always trying to express the thing that bodies can be beautiful, but at the same time, quite repulsive. I’m trying to convey the duality within that.

DA: I connect with that so much. As you know, my work is exploring really similar things. I think that duality is fascinating, how it can be one thing and then the other. And also thinking about the skin as a permeable membrane or barrier that covers up all the gore, but things can still go through it and be absorbed by it.

BM:  Yeah, completely. Often my work is the body from the inside looking out. So thinking about the negative spaces, or spaces around things, or gaps around the body.

DA: I guess that's connecting to how you're saying it's about intimacy in your own body? You know, how can you ever convey the experience of being in your own body to someone else? And just thinking about your work and how it's personal, obviously, you're a woman and I was interested in the first time that you really became aware of how women's bodies are represented in the media and wider society.

BM:  That's a really hard thing to pin down because as long as I can remember I've always really hated my body and have always wanted to change it. I think it was just pervasive, to be honest. The culture of skinniness, dieting and that women are meant to criticise each other's bodies or self-criticise. In magazines you'd see pictures of celebrities with a circle pointing out their tummy fat or a double chin. I couldn't say when the first time was because I’ve just never known anything else.

DA:  It's so insidious.

BM:  Yeah, it is. It's really sad. Moving to London helped me as it was a much more multicultural society than what I knew, and people don't seem to care about what everyone else is wearing as much. It feels less judgmental here. And after turning 30, just being more comfortable with myself. Now I'm more angry that women in particular, it affects men as well I'm sure, but that we're encouraged to devote so much wasted time, energy, and money into feeling that way about ourselves. 

DA:  It's crazy. Isn't it? Just the amount of mental space it takes up and the amount of time. I don't wear make-up anymore and one main reason for that is that I don't want to spend time on that.

BM:  Why should you?

‘Proxy’ 2018, C-Type mounted on aluminium with subframe

122cm x 91cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Very true! So I was thinking about the way that your work sits between abstraction and figuration. What potential do you think there is by sitting within that liminal space?

BM:  I'm trying to leave space for the viewer to use their imagination, their mind's eye and to leave a space open for interpretation. My work definitely has a figurative element to it, but it can appear abstract. This gap is where I want the viewer to look closely, to scrutinize, to maybe see pores, follicles, or hairs, and I hope it adds an element of intrigue as well. It gives the chance for the viewer to see what they want.

DA:  Yeah, and the opportunity to be drawn further into it. If you instantly recognise something it can lose that intrigue.

BM:  Exactly. You don't want to give them an open book. I want them to take their own little journey of discovery. 

DA:  Definitely. And you work with quite a lot of different mediums. What will dictate what medium you use?

BM:  I think I'm just really curious and experimental in my practice. I want to try it all. I use plaster, resin, silicone, and latex. You can find bodily qualities within them, and they have this liquidity. Actually, the material might come first and prompt the work. Other times I'll have the idea and find the right material for it. I have never been a person who sticks with one thing.

DA:  And what about with printmaking because it's such a process heavy thing, it's quite hard to be more loose with it as you need to plan a bit more. How do you find the difference between working with sculpture and then working with printmaking? I guess with casting, you've got to plan a lot too.

BM:  I think there are quite a few parallels. There are a lot of stages to mould-making and casting. Since lockdown I've been doing things like reduction woodcuts which are really quite slow and you really have to plan out the different stages, what colour is going to go on top and what are you going to cut away next. It’s been quite methodical. I think that suits me.

DA: When you're developing the sculptures and preparing for that very methodical process of casting, are you drawing? Are you making little maquettes? How did the ideas develop for the forms that you go on to cast?

BM:  The sculptures don't really start with drawing actually, it's more just playing with the material. A lot of the time I pour the plaster directly onto myself and, because I'm working with a negative space, I can't really know exactly how it's going to come out until it's set and it comes off. Other times it’s more planned. I made a work a few years ago casting my ‘non-thigh gap’. There was this trend on social media about being skinny enough to stand with your feet together and have a gap between your thighs. I've never had a gap so I wanted to see what's there instead. It turns out to be a quite interesting shape, like a shark's fin.

‘Fin’ 2019, Lacquered Pewter

26cm x 5cm x 21cm

Photo courtesy the artist

DA:  That’s so interesting! Do you find it difficult casting your own body?

BM:  *laughs* Yeah, it's quite hard. Sometimes I have an assistant. There's definitely a performative element to it, sitting there very still, trying not to move.

DA:  *laughs* Do you feel that your practice has developed and changed a lot since you left the RCA in 2018?

BM:  Yeah, I think so. I mean, when I was at the RCA I was spoiled with the amount of facilities and workshops. We were encouraged to be experimental and try new things. Now it’s a lot more difficult to make work and it's not as cheap. It's more of an investment for sure. For a while I’ve worked with plaster and resin, partly because it was something I could do by myself. Being out of university has been quite freeing as well though, because there's a lot of pressure when you're studying for an MA. You have conversations all the time and crits, and tutorials. You really scrutinise everything you make, which is really good for the learning process, but it's also quite nice now that I don't have to do that! I can have crits and conversations about work and actually, I think after being locked down, we do really need them. It's a double-edged sword, you need the conversations, but it's also nice to not have to feel like I've got to justify every single thing I make. You learn about your work through talking about it with other people.

DA:  Definitely! Has the pandemic changed the way that you work?

BM:  Yeah, totally. Without those conversations you're left wondering if something is good or not? Is it fulfilling what I wanted it to? Also, limiting the travelling to my studio meant there was more pressure when I was there, so I've been making work from home as well. Being on furlough meant having more time to do things and I've been trying to up-skill as well. I recently did a Jesmonite course and woodworking course. I've been trying to use this time to equip myself with more skills, learn about new materials.

DA:  That sounds great! What would you like people to get from your work when they experience it?

BM:  I hope people can relate to my work, or that it can somehow change the way that they think about something, or at least just think it's interesting. I'd like to make work about women's bodies that I haven't seen before. Because, you know, women's bodies have been represented over and over again throughout history. I want to show them in ways that are unexpected and haven't been already done. I'd like to tackle in some way societal change and make work that's empowering rather than destructive.

‘Perpetual Rolls’ 2018, Copper electro-plated bronze

30cm x 24cm x 8cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  As you say, it's been something that's been done so many times so it’s hard find a unique take, but for me your work does achieve that. 

BM:  Aw, that's really kind. 

DA:  Have you ever had a really interesting or surprising response to your work?

BM:  Yeah, a couple of years ago I was in an exhibition for blind or visually-impaired people called the Touch Tour. It was organised by an artist, Teresa Hunyadi, at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop. I exhibited my pewter Fin piece and it was such a fascinating thing to be involved with, seeing people read your work without using their eyes and through touch instead. I'm very interested in the tactile, and the different textures and materials that I use are really important. A lot of my work is about trying to make the viewer want to touch it.

DA:  What an incredible thing to be part of. 

BM:  It was great. All the people that came were so grateful to be able to experience art in a way that they can't normally. I think particularly as it was sculpture, it's not something that is just for the eyes, it’s for the body. You can walk around it, you can bend down to see it, it confronts you like a body. 

DA:  Could they tell that it was connected to the body?

BM:  Yeah, they could. They could definitely interpret it just as well, maybe even better, but in a different way.

DA:  I guess it’s like a bit of their body that they would have touched and will be familiar with. I hope you get to do it again sometime! I’m also interested in which artists inspire you.

BM:  The first one I'd have to mention is Alina Szapocznikow, who was Polish artist. She was amazing. There was a recent retrospective of her work at the Hepworth in Wakefield. I don't think I came across her long before that. Her work is sad, feminine, sexual, quite fetishistic, quite surreal, but also beautiful and uncomfortable. Then also Jala Wahid. She's also working with this tension between work that's inviting and grotesque and also quite surreal. Her use of materials is really interesting, making sculptures using untypical materials, and she makes casts as well. She makes quite dark things, there are definitely undercurrents of violence there. One more is Alice Channer.

DA:  She has a really interesting use of materials too. 

BM:  Yeah, blurring the natural and the artificial.

DA:  I can definitely see that connection with your work, thinking about the natural and the body.

‘Trunk’ 2021, Silicone and Chondrus Crispus red algae

29cm x 28cm x 43cm (back view)

Photo courtesy of the artist

BM:  For my recent piece ‘Trunk’ I put seaweed that I collected from Brighton beach inside silicone. Women's bodies have always been associated with the earth and with water, since ancient Greece. I wanted to exploit that link.

DA:  What projects are you working on at the moment?

BM:  I finished ‘Trunk’ a couple months ago for an exhibition in Dorset at Thelma Hulbert Gallery. It should happen in the autumn. I think it's the third time it's been postponed! Last year I was elected to join an artists collective called The London Group and it's a show with them. I’ll be showing with them in the summer too, in Waterloo.

DA:  Great!

BM:  In September, I’m going to be starting a ten-month Artist in Residence role at a school in Oxford, which will culminate in a solo show in July next year so that’s going to be an exciting adventure. I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of things though. I’ve been taking stock in this time and have enjoyed having less pressure.

DA: Do you have any plans for future work?

BM:  Lockdown showed how important public artwork is and last year I was meant to be in an exhibition, an outdoor sculpture trail, which sadly got cancelled. For that I was experimenting with plaster based work that can be shown outside, but now I can use Jesmonite which is weatherproof. Also, because a lot of my stuff is from the body it's all life size, and I want to work with scale. How increasing scale can change meaning, like if you're seeing the surface of skin a lot bigger than what it actually is. It's quite difficult because surface is really important to me and you only get that exact texture from casting. Maybe I'll have to 3D scan small work and enlarge it or create the texture by hand.

DA:  I'm very excited to see what you make and I hope I’ll be able to catch the show! Thank you so much Beth, it was lovely to meet you. 

BM:  Thank you!

Find out more about Bethany’s work:

Website

Instagram

Bethany Marett in her studio with ‘Trunk’, photo courtesy of the artist

Sikelela 'Ziggy' Owen

Sikelela ‘Ziggy’ Owen in her studio, photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Can you tell me a bit about yourself?

Sikelela Owen:  Yes, I am an artist, mainly painting, drawing, and printmaking. I was born in London and I moved to the north of England to Cheshire in the middle of my school life. Then I came back down to London for university to study art at Chelsea. I went on to study at the Royal Academy for my Postgraduate degree.

DA:  What have you been doing since graduating in 2012?

SO:  I have been trying to be an artist. *laughs*

DA:  *laughs*

SO:  I have been doing a mixture of shows, and a bit of teaching and working in other fields. I had a few solo shows, including one at James Freeman Gallery last year. I was lucky I got into the 100 painters of tomorrow book.

DA:  I was looking at that this morning! That's so cool you’re featured in it! 

SO:  Yeah, no, it was amazing. When you apply for stuff, you hope stuff comes back, more often than not it doesn't. It was a really interesting and nice project to be part of, especially as I’m an art book lover.

DA:  Me too! I have to restrain myself. It's quite difficult!

SO:  Yeah, fortunately I'm not super rich otherwise we'd be living under a pile of books. *laughs*

DA:  *laughs* Could you introduce your practice and explain what your paintings are of and about?

SO:  They’re loose figurative paintings of friends and family and other people. They're about an idea of community and intimacy. Sometimes they are literally placing those people into the larger narrative of painting. It's kind of how I process the world to a certain extent. I come from a quite dispersed community, so a lot of the people who are part of these images, their geographies and spaces change.

‘The Thinker’ 2018, Oil on canvas

150cm x 100cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Are you painting from memory or do you take reference photos?

SO:  I usually have a source material. However, there are images that I know so well that it's almost redundant.

DA:  Like a family photo that you've seen over many years?

SO:  Yeah. My mum has a collection of family photos in our hallway and there are a couple of portraits of my grandparents I could probably do from memory. I like having the images begin somewhere real. Wherever they end up, that’s their business. Usually it's photos that I've taken or photos that I know super well. I have worked from other people's imagery before, but there's something very important about the selection process. I don't like the photos to be to posed. I like people to be relaxed. But at the same time with the family archive ones, they tend to be people looking at the camera, trying to look a certain way, whereas the more contemporary ones tend to be people lying on the couch and being snapped by yours truly.

DA:  That's interesting, because there’s been a shift to photography being an everyday thing that we're so comfortable with, whereas before, it would have been a special occasion. Your paintings can track that.

SO:  Yeah, exactly, like something which you'd get dressed up for. I love being able to capture those moments. I suppose it began when I was younger with those lovely disposable cameras. You don't know what's going to come out of them. And also with photography, how it reacts with black, brown skin. Most of people in my paintings are people of colour. I remember lots of really interesting incidents where we'd be outside in the dark, and there would just be like an eye in the photos. That's a big thing. There’s also a mediation process, usually photo collage, painting on the photos, drawing from them, printmaking from them. But I think as I've done it so much or so I've gotten so used to it now, that process is often not entirely necessary I can just do everything mentally.

DA:  Was that originally a way to get further away from a very accurate representation of the photo, to abstract it?

SO:  Yeah, I’m not interested in a proper likeness to be honest. I like them to begin somewhere real and to feel and be real. When I first began I used to make literal collages, like I did a painting of my mum as the Queen. Even when I used to visit galleries I was visually putting people into different places. A reason why I really enjoy painting people I know is because I feel like more comes into the painting. I feel I can take more liberties with them and their imagery. My relationship with them comes into it and I feel like more interesting things happen, more interesting conversations between me the person I'm representing, and painting in general. There are so many images of my mum. I don't think she would recognise herself in half of them.

‘The Sunning (Manda and Sike)’ 2021, Oil on canvas

110cm x 180cm

Photo by Rocio Chacon

DA:  Is that relationship something that you share with your audience? Or is it a personal thing that you have with your artwork?

SO:  I personally do not feel that the audience needs to know that it's someone real. It just needs to feel like there's the level of intimacy there. I think the easiest way to do that is to be honest, to have a level of intimacy and share that with the audience. I'm happy for them to know and at the same, I kind of hope that people see echoes of moments in their life in them. You know, a husband sleeping, annoying brothers swearing at you, a daughter's recital, a wedding, a nice family photo. I hope that the realness echoes through it.

DA:  It's interesting there’s that realness but then actually, the figures look very ambiguous, you often can't see their features. Is that a product of the abstraction? Or is that also a conceptual intention?

SO:  I think that's just a product of how I work. I try and keep what I think is important. I don't think it being exactly my aunt is necessary for people to understand the work or to be interested in the work. I want people to be able to place, not place themselves into the work, but…

DA:  Connect?

SO:  Yeah, connect without the barrier of maybe a confrontational gaze, or all these other things.

DA:  Personally, that ambiguity is what draws me in and what makes it interesting. As you're saying, it leaves it open for the opportunity to connect. An accurate likeness of someone doesn't leave much space to be about anything else. 

SO:  I think that's really important. Ultimately I’m presenting a human being. So many things are removed from the original imagery, I probably spend more time removing stuff than putting it in. 

‘The Rehearsal’ in Sikelela’s studio

2020, Oil on canvas, 125cm x 100cm

Photo courtesy the artist

DA:  You've spoken about the loaded history of painting, have you absorbed a lot of paintings and do you feel that that feeds into the work you make? 

SO:  I have absorbed a lot of painting, probably more than specifically researching stuff. I used to visit galleries with my dad when I was a kid. We would go at the weekend to the National Gallery or Tate and top it off with a nice McDonalds! Historical paintings are what I used to love as a kid, especially because the size used to make me feel like I was literally in them, being absorbed by them. They had the edge over TV, because you can make up your own narrative. I do think a lot about historical painting. I borrow from some pretty low brow things as much as I borrow from more high brow things. Composition is something I've often struggled with and now I feel happier to just borrow from those people because they got it right the first time!

DA:  They did and I'm sure they wouldn't mind! How did you your use of a limited palette develop?

SO: Honestly, I'm not entirely sure. I’ve been working towards the palette of the skin for years and years and I just love the outdoors. I basically eliminated a lot of colour. There's a desire for the figure to be harmonious in this space. I did a picture with a ridiculously bright pink in it, but that made sense because I was in Jamaica, and it felt that bright.

DA:  Do you work on multiple canvases at the same time? 

SO:  Yeah, three seems to be a good number. It stops me from just painting stuff for the sake of it.

DA:  It’s so hard knowing when to stop!

SO:  Yeah, as Dana Schutz says, you can overcook a painting.

DA: How has the pandemic changed the way that you usually work? 

SO:  It's been an interesting change for me. In the first lockdown I was pregnant. I was quite paranoid about going into the studio and I was trying to change to less toxic materials, so I didn't really work that much. I had a number of things going on anyway, I had gestational diabetes and carpal tunnel amongst other things.

‘Kaiden’ 2020, Oil on canvas

45.7cm x 35.6cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Do you feel that that's starting to shift for you now? 

SO:  Oh, yes, totally. After giving birth it has been much more positive. Being able to slow down has been amazing, you’ve just had a child and you still want to do your thing but you also don't want to have to feel like you should be rushing and going to private views and trying to be seen. In fact, I've had some opportunities which have come out of the pandemic, such as online shows with Gillian Jason gallery and the Grove Collective. I was lucky I got a Freelands Foundation a-n magazine grant, which has been really amazing for me to feel secure and know that I could keep practicing. Without it I probably would have had to get rid of my studio because I had the baby.

DA:  Congratulations, that’s awesome! In your statement in ‘100 Painters of Tomorrow’ you say how private narratives can be personal and political at the same time. I thought that was really interesting and made me think of the slogan used in 1960s second wave feminism - the personal is political. 

SO:  Yeah, I would agree that the personal is political. In part that’s why I prefer to work from the real. One of the things that I like about art is that people get to tell their own stories and have agency rather than groups co-opting the general narrative. I often paint people of colour and there's a lot of politics about moving in spaces as a human being in general, but as woman of colour and a member of the African diaspora there are a lot of things that are just part of everyday life. One of the projects that I did was based on an image that I saw on Instagram. I thought it was just a beautiful photograph and then I found out it was this young man who had killed himself after being jailed unfairly for three years in the US for allegedly stealing a backpack and he had never actually been sentenced. He was jailed from 16 to 19 and his name was Khalif. I feel like a lot of the ways that we receive imagery are not very satisfying. An image like that shouldn't have the same weight as a picture of my breakfast on Instagram. It's really necessary for people to have time to absorb an image and for people to sit with things. Like you said, the personal is political. I portray my husband a lot, he’s a 6’ 2” black man, and what that represents for a lot of people isn't this soft person who falls asleep with our baby in his hands. Levels of tenderness, intimacy, and vulnerability combined with masculinity isn’t necessarily something that people see regularly. With the protests last year, I thought - I'm gonna stay in bed and sleep, I'm pregnant. It was quite full on. Now I have a young son and my husband’s family lives in New Jersey. 

DA:  So it's very present in your consciousness? 

SO:  Yeah, very present. When we went to go visit his family, he changed the way he dressed from business suits to tracky bottoms and a hoodie. I was like, we are not going into the middle of Manhattan with your hood up, take it down. We're gunna end up on the news! The personal is difficult to untangle from everything else. My gaze definitely changes with what I'm interested in. I'm representing a lot of women at the moment and a lot who have children. Pregnant women came up in my work, before I got pregnant.

‘David (as Olympia)’ 2016, Oil on canvas

160cm x 200cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  A premonition?

SO:  Yeah, I mean we were thinking about it. Then I started reflecting on images of my mum when she was pregnant. I was also reflecting on the loss of family during the years before and maybe losing a connection to where my mum's from, Zimbabwe. It was the loss of them, but also a loss of histories because it's a mainly oral tradition. So it's impossible to untangle from the political for me. What of those kind of things would I be passing onto a child? How important would it be and would it be help or hindrance? I'm one of the few people in my generation who can speak Ndebele, my mom's native tongue. 

DA:  Are you going to teach your son? 

SO:  I'm going to attempt to because the truth is I don't speak it as much as I should.

DA:  I hope it works out! Whose work inspires you?

SO:  Oh, so lots of dead people. But as for living artists, I really enjoy Kerry James Marshall's work. One of the ladies that I was on residency with in Rome,  Tal Regev, I really enjoy her work, and Chantal Joffe. I often admire a lot of photographers like Zanele Mtholo. Also I find loads of London based artists really interesting. It's nice, I'm part of the Contemporary British Painters.

DA:  Oh yeah, I saw you being introduced on their newsletter the other day!

SO:  It's amazingly interesting timing, when I’ve got a 6 month year old! I think there's a renewed interest in figurative painting and I'm lucky to be a part of that right now. But yeah, I like the work of so many people and it ends up being a very noisy space in my head in the studio, and then these quite muted paintings come out.

DA:  It’s interesting how your personal life feeds into your work as well as that. It’s your subconscious coming out!

SO:  Yeah! When I went to Rome, I was thinking about memorials and I made a painting of my uncle who has passed away. It had a very Caravaggio style composition going on. So it’s this weird combination of a lot of things. I've been thinking about loss a lot, also in the wider world. In my lifetime I don't remember not being part of the EU or Robert Mugabe not being in charge of Zimbabwe. I don't tend to do politics with a big P, because it's not really my thing. I don't know how much I can add to that, because I feel like there are really great protests. I feel like all I can do is describe a space, invite people in and describe these human beings. 

‘Knitting’ 2018, Oil on canvas

183cm x 152cm

Photo courtesy the artist.

DA:  But that can be more powerful because it can slip in without people realising. Whereas if it's in your face, then people could have a strong reaction and not engage at all. 

SO:  Yeah, I suppose so, and also being a human being navigating the world is political.

DA: Very true! You’ve mentioned some of the projects that you've been working on recently, is there anything else coming up? 

SO: At the moment I'm working on a limited edition print for Hospital Rooms and I have a couple of shows coming up at the end of the year. 

DA:  Oh, nice. 

SO:  I don't think I've ever been this busy in my whole life!

DA: Wow. Plus a baby and a pandemic!! Are you managing to juggle everything? Is your head not exploding?

SO:  Oh yeah, last month, when I was doing all those shows. But in general, I think I'm quite confident we can work at our own pace because most of these things are at the end of the year.. I'm really lucky because my husband is at home so he can sub in quite easily and Eli is quite compliant. I've got a solo show at James Freeman, and one at Taymour Grahne Projects coming up, and a group show with the Contemporary British Painters. 

SO:  This year is going to be a balancing act of being part of stuff, but also just being able to take time away for family. Some artists mothers I was speaking to just took two or three years off.

DA:  Wow that's gonna have a huge effect on their career. A whole three years off?

SO:  Yeah…

DA:  What age can he go to nursery? 

SO:  Maybe in a year? One of the things that came up in the report about women artists is that you're paying for daycare and you're making work in the studio, but studio work doesn't necessarily work out to be paid work.

DA: That must be such a difficult thing to manage. Good luck trying to strike a balance! Well, thank you so much. 

SO: Thank you.

Find out more about Sikelela’s work:

Website

Instagram

Closeup of ‘Eli and I’

2021, Oil on canvas, 100x150cm

Photo courtesy the artist

Vickie Vainionpää

Vickie Vainionpää in her studio, photo courtesy of Vickie Vainionpää

Damaris Athene: Could you start off by giving an introduction to yourself and your background?

Vickie Vainionpää: I was born in Toronto, Canada and I now live and work in Montreal. I've always been painting and drawing my whole life, and my focus on art intensified when I went to school. Taking oil painting classes in university is what first got me hooked on the medium. It is a medium that is rich with history, but it’s challenging. Mixing paint, using various types of oil, solvent, how to lay glazes... still to this day I feel like I haven’t discovered all the intricacies of the medium, but that’s exciting to me. You can use it in so many different ways, and each painter approaches it a bit differently. Oil paint never stops surprising me. It has this gorgeous shine and luminescence that is immediately captivating. It’s buttery and smooth, and the gradations you can achieve are unmatched, something that always frustrates me when photographing my work!

DA: Yes, there’s nothing quite like oil paint!

VV: Yeah! A few years later, 2016 or so, once I had graduated from my Bachelor’s, I was accepted to a couple residences. The first at Ragdale Foundation, Illinois, and next The Banff Center for Arts and Creativity in Alberta. During this period of time I was teaching myself how to code, designing websites for corporate clients, and really digging into digital art and 3D modelling. There were a few really influential painters who were beginning to use digital processes in their work, David Hockney and Amy Sillman, along with the whole ‘Post-Internet’ art movement, many of whose work I immediately connected with. I also remember going to see this show, The Forever Now at MoMA and instantly falling in love with the work of Kerstin Bratsch, Laura Owens, and so many others. This time period between school and my professional practice was really formative and that’s when I started forming the body of work that I am still working on today.

DA: How interesting to find out how your interest in digital art and 3D modelling began! Could you tell me more about your practice?

VV: My practice considers the impact of technology on the process of painting. My work starts digital, and ends as oil paintings on canvas. I use a plugin that randomly plots points in 3D space and connects them together in a B-spline (basically, it’s like the computer is creating individual strokes, or drawings, on its own). The results are curvy, fluid lines that are unique every time the script runs. I will go through and select interesting forms to light, texture, and create final compositions from, and finally paint by hand using oil on linen. The shapes that it generates are captivating to me, they have a lot of movement to them. In the same way that I can scribble on a piece of paper and see the trace of my hand on the surface, it’s as if we’re seeing the hand of the machine through the motion of these lines. They can curve, fold, and morph in ways reminiscent of limbs, intestines, or cellular organisms. I really like this connection between the human body and digital technology.

‘Soft Body Dynamics 35’ 2021, Oil on canvas

42" x 64"

Photo courtesy of Vickie Vainionpää

DA: Wow that’s such an interesting way to work! Could you explain your process using the 3D modelling software you mentioned? How long have you been using it for?

VV: I started using 3D software around 2016. My process is one of trial and error. I go back and forth between the canvas and computer a lot. In the beginning, it takes me quite a while to settle on a composition I’d like to paint. That’s the toughest part. I have an archive of hundreds and hundreds of renders on my hard drive. On any given day, I might feel like experimenting in 3D, learning a new part of the program, or I might feel like digging through the archive of forms and trying to make something out of them. I think enjoy starting with 3D software because it’s the ultimate blank canvas -- there’s this virtual barren space with physical parameters that can be altered radically or subtly to produce different results every time. When I'm playing around in the computer, I am drawn to forms and textures that remind me of existing organic matter. Something that nature could dream up, but that remains alien. Once I have settled on an interesting composition, I’ll begin the physical painting process. I use oil on linen or cotton canvas. Recently, I have been trying to encourage more painterly interventions to happen at this stage. I’ll sometimes consciously create a texture that could be rendered by hand by pooling solvent, or something more chance-based. I think it’s important to maintain the quality of the painted surface, so I’m currently working that out in my approach. I use raw linen, which is also a conscious choice; it contrasts the very smooth gradations of light and shadow, which I feel lends to this balance of organic/inorganic. It also is my way to participate and acknowledge the rich history of oil on linen, and connect my work to the network of painters that came before me.

DA: How long do the paintings take to make? How do you achieve such a smooth seemingly digital surface?

VV: Each painting usually takes about a month to make, from start to finish. And, funnily enough, the digital part of my process often takes equally as long, if not longer, than the time I spend painting. I will usually work on two or three works at any given time. That’s helpful both in a technical sense, to coordinate drying times and layers, but also to stagger the rewarding feeling of finishing a piece. It keeps me motivated to always have a few pieces on the go.

‘Soft Body Dynamics 26’ 2020, Oil on canvas

62" x 72"

Photo courtesy of Vickie Vainionpää

DA: That surprises me that the digital part of the process takes nearly as long! I saw you’d made some sculptural work. What’s the process for making that and how does it tie into your paintings?

VV: Yes! In January of 2020 I started experimenting more with sculpture. For my exhibition ‘Parallel Wilderness’, I used the same forms in my paintings as I did for sculptural work. Since these forms start out 3-dimensional in their native digital environment, it was interesting to bring them into the physical world next. I really like how you can walk around the pieces and view it from all angles, as opposed to a static painting. My favourite sculpture from that show is a really large piece called ‘Wriggler (Pink/Blue)’. It was a huge undertaking to make, and I learned a lot! In terms of process and materials, the core is styrofoam, and it’s coated smooth with resin, sanded and finished by hand, then finally airbrushed. I provided the 3D model to my fabricator, who input that data into their cutting machine. So it’s a perfect 3D rendition of the digital model.

DA: Wow that sounds amazing! What initially drew you to investigating the relationship between natural forces and digital processes?

VV: Technology is, and always will be, extremely important to my work and it’s aims. The goal of my work has always been to demonstrate the harmony that comes by fusing natural and digital forces. I am a techno- optimist through and through — I believe that to move forward, as artists and also as humans, we must embrace emerging technologies rather than fear or dismiss them. I think that too much of the conversation surrounding technology right now is fear mongering. Too many people are afraid. But we are not living in a destructive, catastrophic time, just the opposite. We are living in an expansive time, full of excitement and possibilities. As technology evolves, we evolve along with it. It’s my hope that my work helps to facilitates a shift in thinking so that more people are able to become actively and boldly optimistic, instead of passively pessimistic. In a broader sense, about what drew me in, and without getting too esoteric... In technology I see a certain movement and direction towards some sort of ultimate interconnectivity. A flow and exchange of information between everything that touches it. I strongly believe that our technology is the catalyst for positive change, transformation, and maybe even some form of enlightenment.

‘Prickly Goo’ 2019, Oil on linen and acrylic on wall

48”x58”

Photo courtesy of Vickie Vainionpää

DA: Is there any technology in particular that you feel does or will help to connect us?

VV: I mean, just look at Zoom right now during the pandemic. In lieu of huge parties or surface- level interactions, I think it’s really enabled us to connect more deeply with those closest to us. Even though I can’t wait to be physically with my family and friends again, I do feel like our connection has been strengthened throughout this whole thing.

DA: Yeah I’ve definitely noticed that too. Do you feel that the pandemic has shifted how we think about technology, for the better or worse?

VV: It definitely has. Especially now with the recent resurgence of digital art in the form of NFTs and the blockchain. The possibilities are really amazing. There have been some really great shows happening entirely online and in the metaverse. Slowly, people are starting to accept the digital is here to stay, and look at it as adjacent, as complimentary to IRL experiences, instead of threatening to them.

DA: How do you usually work and how has that been affected by the pandemic?

VV: To be honest with you, my work and process has not really been affected by the pandemic. I’m still going to the studio, still painting daily. If anything, I have been working much more and longer hours, since all the social activities have been totally wiped off the calendar. I’m finding time to focus and develop new concepts, and also to connect more with my artist friends online. It’s definitely been tough not to see friends and family in person, but that’s been more of a personal toll than an artistic one.

DA: That’s great that you’ve been able to paint more and develop new concepts. What would you like people to get from your work?

VV: A sense of hope, beauty, and optimism.

DA: Well I definitely get that! What’s the favourite piece you’ve made?

VV: It changes every day! I recently upgraded my renderer to Redshift and that has made an enormous difference in the quality of source material I use. So my favourite paintings are definitely the most recent ones, specifically, I think that Soft Body Dynamics 36 is my current fave.

DA: Oh yes I love that one. I love Soft Body Dynamics 36 too! How did you come up with the title for the Soft Body Dynamics series?

‘Soft Body Dynamics 36’ 2021, Oil on canvas

40" x 64"

Photo courtesy of Vickie Vainionpää

VV: The name Soft Body Dynamics refers directly to the type of simulation I use. In computer graphics, soft bodies are basically any deformable object, as opposed to a rigid body which is stiff and inflexible. For example, a desk or a wooden chair would be a rigid body, but a balloon or a pillow would be a soft body. Their motions can be springy, bouncy, gooey, squishy etc. The interesting part about soft body simulation for me, is the ability to replicate the properties of organic materials, such as soft tissue, hair, or even microscopic level organisms. I like how the movement and interaction between these shapes relates directly to the dynamics of our internal biology.

DA: That’s so interesting! So you’ve mentioned some artists already but are there any other artists whose work has inspired you?

VV: There are so many and the list could be endless but here are some - Luis Hidalgo, Hilma Af Klint, Lesley Vance, Mike Lee, Matthew Stone, Emma Stern, Emily Mae Smith, Frank Stella, César PieHe, Alessandro Keegan, Igor Hosnedl, Vivian Greven, Eva Fabregas...

DA: An amazing list of artists and some new names for me to look up, thank you! What projects have you been working on recently?

VV: I am currently working on a duo show with the artist Bijijoo. There’s a really cool relationship between our works, we both start digital and have our own relationship to the body, so I’m really excited to see that come to life. It will be in New York at GR Gallery this June. I’m also heading to Palazzo Monti this fall where I’ll be working on a solo show for Nicola Pedana Gallery in Italy.

DA: Apart from those exhibitions, what plans do you have for future work?

VV: I hope to make some more sculpture in the near future, and I also have this idea for a generative chair design floating around in my head! Of course, I will continue to paint and push my 3D skills further. Super excited to see what the next year brings.

DA: I can’t wait to see what you make this year! Thanks so much Vickie. It’s been a pleasure!

VV: Thank you Damaris!

Installation View of ‘Parallel Wilderness’ at AVE Gallery

Photo courtesy of Vickie Vainionpää

Find out more about Vickie’s work:

Website

Instagram

Vickie Vainionpää painting in her studio, photo courtesy of Vickie Vainionpää

Hazel Soper

Hazel Soper in her studio, photo courtesy of Hazel Soper.

Damaris Athene:  Could you start off by giving an introduction to yourself and your background?

Hazel Soper:  Yeah, I'm originally from Norfolk and I currently live in Newcastle. I work with installation and videos, and some sculpture and print.

DA:  So you work with lots of different media, how does that come about?

HS:  Usually, I'm research based in my practice. I read and research a topic and then make a video to start to explore that and learn as I go. It’s helps me to decide my areas of interest and my opinions on the topic. Then I take bits of these video elements and make them in real life, blurring the boundaries between offline and online and making it more interactive.

DA:  What are some of the things that you've researched in your recent projects?

HS:  I've done a lot about witches recently and the witch hunt, which I'm loving. I'm obsessed with Sylvia Federici's 'Caliban and the Witch'. It's about the dawn of capitalism and how capitalism and the patriarchy worked through the witch hunts to oppress women and how that's carried on to now. It's about how women had knowledge of plants and things and the witches in the village could do abortions for people and give contraception. Then with capitalism, they needed a bigger workforce so they were demonised. Men could control childbirth again and the workforce could keep reproducing.

DA:  Grim isn't it?

HS:  It's horrible. There are so many parallels, especially with what's going on at the moment, with control over women's bodies and the fact that in America and Poland there's still so much contention around abortion. How is that still an issue?

DA:  It's so shocking isn't it?  It's 2021 and yet still there are many places where you can't get an abortion. It was only recently legalised in Ireland which is just crazy.

HS:  In Northern Ireland I saw today that the the British government wants to push through some laws quicker, but the DUP are fighting against it. It’s just crazy that people can't see that as inequality. 

DA:  Yeah! 

HS:  Oppressing women and people are saying that feminism doesn't need to exist anymore.

‘She’s So Annoying And So Irrelevant’ 2017, Video, Audio, Screen Printed Paper

Photo courtesy of Hazel Soper

DA:  It’s crazy! Has it all your research been centred around feminism?

HS:  Yeah, it's always feminist issues, I think just because I am a woman. It's best for me to talk about things that I do know and understand rather than appropriating anything else. There are a lot of influences of Marxism in there too, and concepts of alienation. With the materials I use, and with trying to bring out elements from the videos, I'm trying to create more engagement with the work. I feel like we are very alienated from the process of making products, because everything is made globally far away from us that we can just buy, and we have no idea how anything's made. With the sculptural elements of my work I try and address that.

DA:  There's so much miscomprehension about how things are made, especially electronics. People used to know how to fix their toaster or whatever and now we have no idea how to fix our iPhones, which were with 24/7. Could you speak a bit more about the different materials  you use? Maybe you could use one of your previous installations as an example?

HS:  I like printmaking a lot, especially screen printing because it's mass produced, but also each copy is unique having slight different flaws. The whole history of printmaking and literacy is really interesting and how it has been democratising. A piece I made a while ago, ‘She's So Annoying and So Irrelevant’, was about online abuse. I made about 500 meters of prints on paper to accessorise a video that I made. It was really fun because there was just so much of it. It worked to cover up the space and be impactful.

DA:  What was the image that was printed that many times?

HS:  It was all quotes from people online, really horrendous stuff. 

DA:  What kind of reaction did you have from visitors to the exhibition?

HS:  People hated it. I made my friend cry because it was so awful.

DA:  Yeah, so in their face. It's very easy to ignore it normally - you don't follow those people on social media and you're in your nice little bubble where everyone's nice to each other and you don't need to think about all the nasty things. Until, yeah, you then plaster a whole room with it!

HS:  There was a real absence of people saying this stuff about white men. No-one is saying anything horrible on the internet, about that group of people. Yet all these other groups of people? There was so much.

Close-up of ‘She’s So Annoying And So Irrelevant’ 2017, Video, Audio, Screen Printed Paper

Photo courtesy of Hazel Soper

DA:  It must have been pretty horrendous for you having to research into it and collate all of that information?

HS:  I got a bit desensitised, which is horrible. It did open my eyes a lot. I think it's so silly, because people were feeling the need to have so much vitriol and express so much anger, but to no one in particular. It would be comments on articles about a woman celebrity or something. She's never gonna see that. Why are you sitting there feeling the need to spend your time doing that?

DA:  Yeah! How is that making you feel good? I wonder why someone would want to do that? They're just lashing out anonymously into the void.

HS:  I did start collecting everyone's names from the public Facebook comments. I was going to do a piece with that, where I made a plaque of the quote with the actual name.

DA:  A whole wormhole you can go into! How did you come out of that project? Normally does one thing lead to another or do you have a completely new idea for next thing?

HS:  I find something interesting from that research, and then pick back up on that. I moved on to a project that was about our personal relationships with our phone, and the intimacy we have with that object. I’ve been wanting to make work about the climate crisis for a while, but I didn't quite see how I could make it fit. Through doing projects angled towards it, it’s naturally evolved in that direction, through looking at how our phones are made, where the components come from.

DA:  In your statement you mention ecofeminism. Could speak a bit more about that, and define the term?

HS:  It’s a theory that the environment and women are intrinsically linked through oppression from the patriarchy, and how the issues that affect one affect the other. For example, one of the biggest factors of damage to the climate is birth rate and population size, but there's proven links between if females in a population have better education, the birth rate goes down, because they've basically got more opportunity. If women were emancipated it would mitigate the effects of climate change more.

‘Altar for the Commons’ 2020, Vegetable Dyed Fabrics

Photo courtesy of Hazel Soper

DA:  So interesting, in mainstream media that link is never made. I hadn't thought about it in such a holistic way before. If women are more equal it's better for everyone, including the planet!

HS:  Yeah!

DA:  What's the project that you're working on at the moment that's exploring these things?

HS:  I'm making a video and experimenting with some soft sculptures. I’m using women as a metaphor for how we treat the planet and the notions of how we extract elements from the earth. Going back to what you were saying about how we don't know how iPhones are made, and the fact that there are all these mines where people are treated terribly, trying to extract the elements needed for the iPhones. We don't even know that. I don't think we associate technology with being natural and coming from the earth. So going back to this abuse really, that both the planet and women suffer. And how we are used by the patriarchy and by capitalism for resources and are not respected. 

DA:  Definitely and I think that's borne out even more in the pandemic. Already the weight of emotional and domestic labor was very much on women and it's significantly increased. Maybe we've gone backwards and will have to claw it back. Has the pandemic affected how you usually work?

HS:  Obviously I understand that people have been having a terrible time and there's been lots of loss going on. But for my practice it's been a good opportunity. I've had more time in one place and more head space. When you're trying to have a job and make art stuff can be a bit discontinued and disruptive. Also my partner and I have recently started a curatorial project called Slop that we never would have done before. We've been putting on projects in lockdown. It was born out of the difficulties that come with being an artist and not getting paid for anything, and having maybe to pay for opportunities that you're applying to give your work to. We're trying to create opportunities to address that.

DA:  That sounds great! Going back to your work, when people are actually able to see it in person again, what do you hope people will get from it?

HS:  I hope people think it's fun. Although maybe not fun, because some of the stuff I do is a little bit more harrowing.

‘Altar for the Commons’ 2020, Resin, Plants, Electrical Components

Photo courtesy of Hazel Soper

DA:  That's rather oxymoronic, a little bit harrowing!

HS:  *laughs* I want people to have a response. I think art is quite inaccessible in general and some people feel like they're not allowed to have an opinion on it in case they get it wrong or they look silly. I want to force people into having a reaction, so they don't feel like they can't.

DA:  Yeah, everything you feel is valid. You don't need to know all of art history to have a response to it. What’s the most interesting reaction you've had to your work?

HS:  I got the most response to ‘She’s So Annoying and So Irrelevant’. Some of it was quite funny. Someone just walked in the room and shouted fuck really loudly and then like turned around. People were very uncomfortable and didn't really want to be in the space, which was my intention. My partner's dad came to see it and was a bit upset afterwards and I thought…not that I wanted him to be upset, but I liked that it was emotional. That you can create emotion through objects and paper effectively in a room.

DA:  Maybe that was the first time he was confronted with it in a physical way. Especially if you're of the age that doesn't go on social media you don't really know about the vitriol that's there. It must have been a pretty intense experience for him. Amazing you could facilitate that…Which artists do you take inspiration from?

HS:  My favourite artist is Laure Prouvost. I'm obsessed with her. Her work is so impactful and all encompassing, but I also really like her voice in it. She often talks to the audience, and I really like the sensitivity and personal quality of it. As a women it's impressed upon us that to be successful or powerful you should emulate a man and that being sensitive or emotional are bad. That you can't be authoritative but also feminine.

DA:  Is there anyone else who you look to?

HS:  I love Rachel Maclean. She does a lot of work about social media with video and installation. She plays the characters in her films which are created by abstracting elements from social media. In one piece that was like a big brother futuristic work camp she was playing Siri and Alexa.

DA:  It sounds incredible and very multi layered.

‘Men-an-Tol’ 2020, Soft Sculpture, Performance

Photo courtesy of Hazel Soper

HS:  It's so interesting. I’ve read articles on how Siri and Alexa having a woman's voice is teaching the passivity of women and using them as a tool. 

DA:  Yeah and the way that people speak to Siri or Alexa, especially kids, and how they can be really rude. How does that translates to how you treat real women? Why do they have women's voices? Why do they even have identities when they’re machines? It evidently sells!

HS:  That's bizarre. I've never actually questioned that before. We don't name our laptops.

DA:  So true! You mentioned your project with the soft sculptures, but is there anything else upcoming or that you’re working on?

HS:  I’m trying to embed environmental concerns in my practice with the actual materials I'm using. I'm trying to only use recycled stuff or natural materials. Also, I was going to visit the RSPB for a residency, which obviously has not happened in the last year. I'm planning on doing some workshops with women working there.

DA:  The bird charity?

HS:  Yeah, they’ve broadened out what they do to be about the ecosystem, which will then keep the birds alive. They do a lot of things with policy, lobbying the government to change farming practice laws and things like that. I want to talk to women working there to find out about their relationship with the environment and what their perspectives on ecofeminism are. It's going to be online for now so I can get started, but I'm hoping that I can have a visit. It's actually an old quarry. So with the soft sculptures I’m thinking about recreating stone and about the extraction of resources from the land. I think it would be really interesting to spend some time there.

DA:  That'd be amazing. Let's hope it's not too long! Well, thank you so much Hazel. 

HS:  Thank you.

DA:  You’re very welcome!

Find out more about Hazel’s work:

Website

Instagram

Hazel installing ‘Altar for the Commons’ at The Fish Factory, Cornwall, 2020

Photo courtesy of Hazel Soper

Ho Lai

Ho Lai in her studio, photography by Nico Conti

Damaris Athene: Could you start off by giving an introduction to yourself and your background and how you ended up in London?

Ho Lai:  No problem. I studied ceramics and glass at the Royal College of Art and I graduated in 2019. It was a master's degree. Before I moved to London, I studied in Hong Kong. I did my BA in Visual Arts, major in ceramics, at the Academy of visual arts at Hong Kong Baptist University. I'm an artist born and raised in Hong Kong. After that I worked for a year at the M+ museum, and then I came here to pursue my master's degree in ceramics and glass. And here I am.

DA:  Now you're still based in London? 

HL:  Yeah, I have a studio space in South East London, Deptford.

DA:  I discovered your work at your RCA degree show and I was blown away because I'd never seen anything made like that with ceramics. I thought, how on earth did she do this? Could speak a bit more about your process?

HL:  There are three prominent elements in my work. The first is the development of an idea. Second is material experimentation. Third is the question of processes, and finding unconventional ways to handle the material. Most of the time in ceramics, we handle the clay from its plastic form to a dry form, and then you fire it in the kiln. But for me is really the reverse. I work from plastic clay to dry clay, and then I work it back to wet clay again, and dry it again. First I work out the colour combination and then I prepare the clay by adding colour stains. I dry the clay and then crush it before casting it back into a mould by wetting it. I create ceramic aggregate forms. Then later on, I decide whether I want to add glazes or anything else.

DA:  And how did you decide on what forms you're going to make?

HL:  At first, I was looking into microscopic images of the human body that describes how skin layers and muscles are formed. As a ceramic ceramics artists for nine years, it is inevitable to have developed back pain and carpal tunnel syndrome.

DA:  Oh really?

HL:  Yeah, because I was constantly overworking myself back in Hong Kong, everyone was very diligent and very into our work. I came to realise that that's going to hurt me at some point. I have to constantly visit a physio doctor and I would experience numbness of my hands and arms when I was sleeping. As a ceramic artist, body is part of our work, our body is very important. I was upset back then and was looking for ways to heal myself. I started understanding more about my body and how it functions. I was really intrigued by medical illustrations and I started thinking about how my work relates to that. I was thinking about how those aggregates can tell the narratives of the human body.

‘Mellow’ 2020, Porcelain

15cm x 6cm x 5cm

Photo courtesy of Ho Lai

DA:  Wow, that's fascinating. I didn't know there was all that research and thinking behind it, but now you mention it, I can completely see the strata of the skin coming through in your work, and there are amazing images that you can find. It's fascinating.

HL:  I deliberately tried not make it too obvious for my audience to reach that narrative. Because sometimes, when you're telling too much, there's less for the audience to think and absorb your work. Some of my work seems like it’s liquid and dissolving. The work itself is a manifestation of my human labor and I feel there is going to be a point that labour disappears. Through kiln firing I captured a disappearance, trying to create this paradoxical state that I have encountered when making my work.

DA:  Wow, how to do you achieve making something look like it’s melting?

HL:  I combine glazes. The whole process was first informed by the dissolving quality of dry clay. With clay when it's dried, you can wet it with water, and then you can reverse it back to plastic clay. My approach is a different from ceramics artists who plan ahead. My process is more like working on a painting, how you respond to the canvas and your brushstrokes. I slowly decide what I want to achieve by responding to what I've made.

DA:  That's really interesting, especially as with ceramics there's so much chance. You might put something in the kiln and then when you bring it out it has exploded! Have there been any times when you’ve had a really nice or a horrible surprise, when something has happened in the process that you weren't in control of?

HL:  You know with material experimentation it’s inevitable to face failures. There was this time, during my final year, my work exploded in a kiln and it caused so many splinters in the kiln, the glazes were stuck onto the kiln bricks. It was a traumatic experience for me, but at the same time it's a good reminder for me to always think about precautions to protect the kiln equipment. And by not having too much of a preconceived end I feel more excited when I am working with my projects. I’m always looking forward to something, instead of trying to achieve something I’ve already imagined. 

DA:  No, totally, it's always a surprise. Also, if you work trying create the image in your head, you’re never going to achieve that, no matter what you do, and especially with ceramics. There’s always a need to realign your goals afterwards, which you can avoid. 

HL:  Yeah, exactly. When I started working with ceramics, there would be times when the pots might go wrong and I was thinking about how to take on this disappointment. Do I let it become a hurdle for my practice? Or do I transform it to something else? Disappointment can also be transformed to another form of hope or motivation. That led me to experiment with materials and accept how materials behave.

Ho Lai’s studio, photo courtesy of Ho Lai

DA:  It sounds like an amazing way to work. Could you tell me about how you usually work and whether that's been affected by the pandemic and if so, how?

HL:  Yeah, ceramics, it's a material that has a specific timeframe to work with, because it's gonna dry and it requires a lot of attention. You have to babysit your work! During the pandemic I haven’t been able to do that so whenever I'm in the studio I have the pressure to finish something. My momentum is not as strong as before, because I can't go to the studio that often. It's quite annoying, because you don't know when lockdown is going to happen again or be eased. So at home I’ve been attending lectures and online courses, reading, sketching and doing paperwork.

DA:  How has your work developed since leaving the RCA? Obviously, the pandemic's happens and that might change things, but apart from that. 

HL:  I think my work has evolved from a more complex process to a more distilled approach. At the RCA I tried to show everything from my test results. The pandemic has given me time to reflect and filter out the important elements from my work.

DA:  It sounds like that's been really beneficial. Whose work inspires you?

HL:  Ron Nagle an American ceramics artist. I like the way he contrasts a smooth and glossy glaze with a matte one and how he uses colour gradation. Also Takuro Kuwata, a Japanese artist who makes crazy, colourful ceramics with blobs coming out. He has been a pioneer in the field. And Pam Su who was the year above me at the RCA. Her practice is certainly groundbreaking.

DA:  I'll have to check all of them out! Do you look to any other types of art apart from ceramics for inspiration?

HL:  Yeah, definitely. Louise Bourgeois. As a female artist, I resonate so much with her work. Her work has informed my practice so much and also her ideology as a sculptor, her artistic approach in finding new ways to handle material has ignited me to think about how I can apply that to ceramics. Beside her, David Hockney and Francis Bacon's and their great colour combinations.

‘Aggregates’ 2019, Porcelain & Glazes

Left - 8.5cm x 16cm x 8.5cm, Middle - 8cm x 8cm x 10cm, Right - 5cm x 5cm x 12 cm

Photo courtesy of Ho Lai

DA:  That's fascinating. Louise Bourgeois is someone that I really admire myself. What are you working on at the moment?

HL:  I’m currently working on the British Ceramics Biennial AWARD, which will be shown this year in September. It’s about material experimentation and my identity as a Hong Kong British citizen. I hope this work will resonate with people in the future who migrate to the UK.

DA:  Congratulations! That sounds like a really exciting project.

HL:  Besides that I’ve been working on a series related to lockdown, about how the only way that I can connect with the outside world is looking through the window.

DA:  I'm very intrigued to see how that manifests.

HL:  I've also been revisiting techniques that I didn’t have the time to develop while I was at the RCA.

DA:  Are you able to get into your studio in Deptford at the moment?

HL:  I try to organise my time to reduce the risk of commuting by having studio days and home office days. It trained me how to manage my time better.

DA:  That’s a good way to do it. Do you have a favourite piece that you've made?

HL:  I would say my favourite piece is ‘Return’. The culture in the east and the west is very different. I've always admired people here, that they have confidence talking about their work unlike myself sometimes. Going to the RCA has given me much more confidence, but during the final year show I was always unsure about myself. My final year project was a milestone for the experiments that I conducted in the RCA.

‘Return’ 2019, Porcelain & Glazes

24cm x 14cm x 12cm

Photo courtesy of Ho Lai

DA:  I'm so excited to see what you make next. Surely you can't innovate again, but it sounds like you will be!

HL:  Thank you so much. I feel like my work is a bit different from the rest of my classmates, not something that an audience can always anticipate. Is that a vase? Is that a bowl? Some people would ask me, What are these? Is it meant to be used?

DA:  I can see how that could be an awkward space to inhabit, but at the same time it makes you really unique. I definitely see them as sculptures. Would you mind if someone bought a piece and then used it as a functional object?

HL:  I wouldn't mind. If a person collects my work they have ownership and it depends on that owner to take on its function.

DA:  Sure, that makes sense. Is there anything else you want that we haven’t spoken about yet?

HL:  Yeah, I was very lucky because I graduated before the pandemic happened, but I really feel for people who have just graduated. So many exhibitions have been canceled and that physical exposure is important for us. It's a challenging period of time. I have great admiration for the emerging artists who are still continuing their practices at the moment, despite what is happening.

Colour testing, photo courtesy of Ho Lai

DA:  Yeah, it must be so hard, especially for everyone currently studying. First years at the RCA haven't even been able to get into their studios yet!

HL:  Yeah, I also feel for them. It's really sad because ceramics is a material that needs studio space and equipment, like jewellery and even painting.

DA:  Yeah. Do you know people studying there at the moment?

HL:  Yeah, some students in their first and second year are having to pay extra money to rent another space. When you are already paying so much for the tuition, and still have to pay extra for material and studio space…I think it is not very fair.

DA:  No, not at all. They should be getting their money back. 

HL:  Yeah, it’s crazy. I want to encourage everyone who's still making, we are together!

DA:  Yeah!

HL:  Also don't to be too stressed out, because I think when we are too anxious about the current situation, that can drain away our creativity as well. So, you know, just chill, relax, and keep making!

DA:  A good motto for life, I think! Thank you so much. It's been so lovely meeting you.

HL:  Thank you!

Close up of ‘Mellow’ 2020, Porcelain
Photo courtesy of Ho Lai

Find out more about Ho’s work:

Website

Instagram

Ho Lai in her studio, photography by Sandra Lam

Nettle Grellier

Nettle Grellier in her studio, photo courtesy of Nettle Grellier

Damaris Athene:  Nettle, can you tell me a bit about yourself?

Nettle Grellier: I’m from Stroud and both my art and my parents are artists. I grew up with that in my life and now me and all my siblings are in the arts. I was born in 1993. I'm 27. I studied at Kingston University, and then at Brighton University. Since studying I've lived in Spain, which was really great, and I exhibited there a lot. I ran a residency there as well, in Granada, and now I'm down in Cornwall.

DA:  Can you tell me a bit about your practice?

NG:  I do figurative oil paintings. They’re colourful, a combination of fluorescent-y colour schemes mixed with more natural earthy tones. They usually have one, two or three figures interacting with each other, and within quite dry, arid landscapes. Humour is important, the grotesque nature of being a human is important to me, and colour is important to me. *laughs*

DA:  With the colour, that's quite a contrast between the fluorescence and the natural. What do you want to bring by using those colours?

NG:  I think it's to do with when I lived in Spain, because there was this heat that was always present and then also living in Cornwall. The light here is just something that has always drawn artists. At one point I went through an earthy purple with bright yellows and bright oranges phase. That's definitely from springtime in Cornwall when the gorse flowers are coming out and there are little purple flowers around them. It’s often taken from my environment, but then I'm also just really attracted to a highlighter orange next to an earthy brown. I like to put a bright ground onto the canvas before I start painting because then anything you put over the top, it's such high contrast.

DA:  Yeah, it makes it vibrate. It's quite amazing. I hope I can see your paintings in the flesh sometime I’ve only ever seen them digitally.

NG:  Yeah. That’s something obviously I can't fucking wait for, seeing work in the flesh. I don't know what it's done to everybody's practices only exhibiting online for a year. It's something I've always worried about, making sure that the quality of the works stand up on its own beyond being in a little photograph.

DA:  Yeah, I think it can be a real danger. On Instagram it’s so tiny and you're also constantly looking at an image that's got light projecting through it. It’s never going to be the same. With your work I notice a digital/synthetic influence coming into the natural colours.

‘The Weed Puller’ 2020, Oil on Canvas

25cm x 20cm & 28cm x 35.5cm

Photo courtesy of Nettle Grellier

NG:  I'm sure my use of colour is also influenced by Instagram. I also really like 70’s colour combos. I really love the old TfL fabrics. I love it when it's slightly jarring or shouldn't work that way. That's something that I want to try harder at in my own painting. I'm always so worried about my work being naff.

DA:  In my opinion, it's definitely not naff!

NG:  Thank you. That's really nice.

DA:  I think there's a lot of stuff out there that is that you see on Instagram. I can understand the fear, but you are miles apart from that. Miles!

NG:  Sometimes it's verging on the edge, I throw a lot of stuff away. It's interesting to see what is really popular on Instagram in the art world, and important as an artist to remember to see beyond that and to have a more long term idea of what you're doing. 

DA:  No, definitely. If you look at a lot of the artists who have the most followers on Instagram, it's off the scale of naff. That's what's popular. I think you've got to try stay true to yourself and try ignore that.

NG:  It's interesting. It’s a hard balance to strike between running yourself as a business so that you can afford to keep making art and earn a living, and falling into that horrible trap of the internet and Instagram. I've definitely experienced a bit of a decline in my Instagram recently and whilst I know that it doesn't matter, sometimes it makes me feel shit.

DA:  But then the change in the algorithm that happened recently, it's made a huge difference, particularly to creatives that aren't pushing for sales. They really like accounts that sell stuff.

NG:  You have to bear that in mind don't you, so that you're like, that's not about me.

Currently Untitled, part of a series of A5 drawings for 'In Heat' with Plum Cloutman at Blue Shop Cottage 5th-12th May

Photo courtesy of Nettle Grellier

DA:  Yeah, exactly. Do you manage to completely support yourself by making work?

NG:  Yeah, I mean, I've definitely needed the government grants this year, which luckily I was eligible. But I don't have any other jobs.

DA:  That's amazing!

NG:  I think partly that's because I've chosen to live in cheaper ways as well. I lived in a truck for five years, didn't really pay much rent didn't have bills, so I could afford to rent a good studio. Recently it's been more difficult. That's one of the reasons why I just sacked in the studio for a bit. I could do a drawing project for a while to keep myself afloat with the support pledge and then also use that time to get out of the stagnant funk that I was starting to feel myself heading towards in painting.

DA:  Was that a funk that was pandemic related, or would it have happened anyway, or is it too hard to untangle those two things?

NG:  I think it is hard to untangle those two things. At this time of year I always struggle the most, but it was financial pressures too. I probably could have got through the next six months, but I would have been stressed and that might not have been that productive. I had a flat before I moved down here that I was renting through an estate agent. It's such a commitment and it's so expensive. I've been so lucky that I've managed to avoid that for such a long time. But bloody hell, it completely changes things.

DA:  That's amazing that you avoided that for so long.

NG:  Yeah, well you've gotta live in a truck for five years, which has its own downsides. 

DA:  How was that? 

NG:  It was a really amazing thing to do in Spain because there's more space and it's more acceptable. It allowed me to do lots of things like run a residency, travel about, experience a bit of after university time where I could be a bit more carefree. Coming back to England in it was a lot harder. I found it isolating after a while because with a big vehicle like that you have to be in very rural places. For me was too much of a hermit-y life and it made me quite unhappy. I was making quite a lot of work about being isolated, like two years ago, which now a lot of people are doing. Maybe that's also partly why I'm feeling quite stagnant, because I've done that theme.

‘Don’t Be Funny’ 2020, Oil on Canvas

28cm x 25.5cm

Photo courtesy of Nettle Grellier

DA:  Has the pandemic changed how you work?

NG:  Well definitely at the moment because I'm not painting at all. My mum's an artist and regularly she’s taken a few months just to do drawing to get out of a rut. That's why I'm doing it. I've become more confident in the last year, because I was in a bit of a bad place last couple of years. This year, for me has been quite transformative anyway, regardless of the pandemic. Hopefully my work has been reflecting that I feel more confident about who I am. Things like humour are an important part of that.

DA:  I've noticed that progression in your work and I absolutely love the humour. I think it takes a journey to get to the point where you feel comfortable doing that. I find that within myself, my younger self wouldn’t have had the confidence to use humour.

NG:  Yeah, I don't know if you can when you're young because you need to be a bit bit older and more embittered. *laughs*

DA:  *laughs*

NG:  But also if you're young and you're making work that's just funny you might not get taken seriously. I don't sell as much work now as I did before, because it's a more specific taste. It's definitely more me so it's important to keep doing it. I wouldn't have been able to support myself off this type of work before.

DA:  I can understand that, someone just wants a pretty picture for their wall. They don't want someone holding a fart!

NG:  *laughs* I get so many messages from people on Instagram, being like, do you have any of your work from 2017/2018 left? I find it really hard not to get annoyed with them. To me that stuff is quite vacant and vapid, wet blanket-y.

DA:  It's what people like though. 

NG:  Of course, and I get it like that's a lot less aggressive to put on your wall than someone spitting in someone's mouth.

DA:  I want someone spitting in someone's mouth, please!

Currently Untitled, part of a series of A5 drawings for 'In Heat' with Plum Cloutman at Blue Shop Cottage 5th-12th May

Photo courtesy of Nettle Grellier

NG:  When I graduated in 2015, I was mainly doing still lives. And I was obsessed with Mary Fedden. I remember one of my tutors telling me that he had a name for commercial work and then another name that he practiced under for the weirder stuff. I guess that's exactly what I did for a while, I just made what I knew I could make a living off. Now I feel like I’m finally doing the thing that really comes from me. 

DA:  That's great you’ve got to that point. That's an interesting way he looked at it. It sounds quite stressful! I'm just thinking more about your use of the grotesque. I’ve got a great quote from an Artnet article about contemporary female artists - ‘The grotesque becomes a means to dissolve power structures’.

NG:  Yeah, that is actually really similar to what my amazing tutor, Benjamin Senior, said to me on the Turps Banana Correspondence Course that I did from 2019 to 2020. That's when I became more interested in the grotesque. I think it dissolves power structures because it's very anti the ideal body image, especially a female body being painted by a male artist. It rejects that in such a way that’s quite extremely the opposite. It's grotesque, it’s disgusting, and it's funny. There are orifices and there are things coming out of them! It’s a great way to reject that. Also then politically it aligns with left liberal ideals and ideologies. I think, quite often, the grotesque comes out of big events. It resurges when big things are happening. It’s maybe slightly more political than other types of figurative painting, but maybe that's a bit of a sweeping statement!

DA:  I don't know, I would agree with that. I think it's a really playful way that you can subvert societal structures and societal norms. To poke at things in a way that turns them on their head and opens up a lot more possibilities. 

NG:  Yeah. Dark humour is very cool human ability and it comes out at times of adversity. I think it is one of the things that we have that we should make use of. It's a strong thing to have a dark sense of humour when things are all going to shit. One of my favourite artists is Lindsey Mendick. I feel like she's nailed that.

DA:  Her work is so uniquely her and she's confessional in a very humorous way.

NG:  I really like her Instagram! I’m interested in popular culture and people on Instagram and fucking love Island or whatever. I'm not above it just because I'm an ‘artist’. That’s the shit that I like, that makes me think about humans and human nature and stuff much more than reading a shitload of books or something. *laughs*

‘Tangle Tease//Ah ha ha ha Come the Fuckdown’ 2020, Oil on Canvas

120cm x 170cm

Photo courtesy of Nettle Grellier

DA:  No, for sure. That's one thing that I remember from Camberwell, a tutor saying to not put your influences into a hierarchy. You could be just as influenced by Big Brother as by reading a monograph of an artist. That was mind-blowing for me! 

NG:  Yeah, it's really cool when artists accept that within their work and just face it. Lindsey Mendick does that so well. To be an artist that thinks you're intellectually above everyone else is boring.

DA:  So true! What would you like people to get from your work? 

NG:  I want people to take whatever they need, depending on what mood they're in. You might look at a painting of some people shoving their fingers in each other's mouths and slugs crawling over them and you could feel all sorts of things from that depending on your mood, or the kind of person you are. The only thing that pisses me off is when people sexualise them. That's only ever men who assume it's about sex.

DA:  It's so difficult, isn't it? If you use a female body in any way it gets instantly sexualised.

NG:  Yeah, especially when they are two interacting. Then of course there is an element of the sexual in the grotesque, but more the ugly and bodily function sides of sex rather than like sexualising the body. When I'm making the pictures mostly I'm just laughing at what that people are doing to each other. It depends the mood I'm in when I paint them as well.

DA:  No, that makes sense. And so you've mentioned Lindsey Mendick already, but are there any other people whose work really inspires you?

NG:  Yeah, there are. I've actually written a list down because I always forget people's names. I was just riffing a list this morning and a few people that came into my brain were Julia Trybala, Rosie Gibbens - a performance artist. She's fucking funny. Zoe Spowage, Plum Cloutman, and  Jonathan Lydon Chase as well.

Currently Untitled, part of a series of A5 drawings for 'In Heat' with Plum Cloutman at Blue Shop Cottage 5th-12th May

Photo courtesy of Nettle Grellier

DA:  What is it about their work that you specifically connect to? Is that their use of figuration? Is it their use of the grotesque? Is it something else?

NG:  They are all quite grotesque artists, and they're all figurative, and they all have a sense of humour that you can see in their work. Also, they're all women apart from Jonathan, who's non-binary. I’m seeking out so much of that kind of visual information at the moment. I just want to see that perspective. 

DA:  I’ve definitely noticed in my research that there are no men!

NG:  It's good though because when we were studying all the books had one woman in them and, of course, now we're trying to make up for everything. I just want to eat up the female perspective for a bit. 

DA:  Yeah, it’s not intentional. I sometimes worry that it's creating a bubble.

NG:  No, I think it's fine. *laughs

DA:  *laughs* Nettle says it's fine so I'm going to carry on going! *laughs* Do you find that you're at a stage where you're getting lots of requests to be part of things? Or are you still applying to things?

NG:  It comes and gos. I'm applying to lots of stuff and also conversations might happen, and then nothing comes out of them. Sometimes stuff comes up but then there's the big lows, where you're like, nobody wants to work with me. My work shift and blah, blah, blah. I don't think that ever goes away. Does that go when people become really successful?

‘So so (I can’t find it)’ 2020, Oil on canvas

170cm x 120cm

Photo courtesy of Nettle Grellier

DA:  Probably not. But it is funny, isn't it? From the outside I'm like, wow, Nettle is doing so well. She's getting all these big shows with big names. But then when it's you, you don't think of it like that do you?

NG:  You don't but then you have to be a bit careful as well. Not to be too woe is me about it. Because it's true. I am getting things and there are lots of artists who are finding it a lot harder to get themselves out there. I'm lucky. I've got enough stuff coming in.

DA:  You've been talking a bit about your drawing project, but is there anything else that you've been working on? Or exhibitions that are coming up?

NG:  Yeah, I've got this old printing tabletop printing press that my dad found in a skip. I'm fixing that up and I'm going to get a little trailer so I can take it to workshop spaces and groups. It would be an accessible printing press for anyone who needs to use it. Then show wise, Plum Cloutman and I have a show coming up at Blue Shop Cottage in the spring. The whole show is about having a sense of humour in a dark time and everything is gonna be tiny. I don't know if we're gonna have time to be able to do this but we wanted to make a smelly candle or soap, because we’re called Plum and Nettle we sound like a Cath Kidston print or something! We wanted it to smell like manure. Then another show is Safe As Milk at Arusha Gallery in Edinburgh, curated by Anna Choutova who's another fucking good artist. It opens in March and it's all about eating and wellness and all the dark side of that, especially during the pandemic.

DA:  Lots of exciting things happening then. I look forward to seeing your exhibitions! Thank you so much Nettle.

NG:  Thanks so much. I really enjoyed that.

DA:  It's been so lovely meeting you. Hopefully it won't be too long until we can see each other in real life!

Find out more about Nettle’s work:

Website

Instagram

Currently Untitled, part of a series of A5 drawings for 'In Heat' with Plum Cloutman at Blue Shop Cottage 5th-12th May

Photo courtesy of Nettle Grellier

Anna Mays

Anna Mays in her studio, photo courtesy of Anna Mays

Damaris Athene:  Can you tell me a bit about yourself? So were you born in Dublin?

Anna Mays:  Yeah I was born in Dublin and lived here all my life until I was 18 and then I went to study Fine Art printmaking at the University of Brighton, which I completed during the first wave of the pandemic. I was planning on going traveling after that but then everything happened at once: there was a lockdown, I just finished my degree, and I had to move out. So I'm back in Dublin, trying to figure out where to go next from here balancing part-time work and making art.

DA:  How was it finishing your degree in the pandemic? That must have been really weird?

AM: At the beginning it was weird because we were all a bit frightened. We'd never had anything like this before. I had come home to surprise my Mum for her birthday and I ended up staying there for nine weeks. I didn't get back to Brighton before the studio closed and my friends had to clear up my studio for me. So it was all really strange, but I found ways to adapt to working at home. I came out with a whole load of work and ideas, but some of it still feels quite unfinished. I'd love to go to a printmaking workshop and do some of it properly. 

DA:  Were there any pieces in particular?

AM:  Yeah, a piece called ‘Transcendence’, which is a shadow assemblage. It's made from radiology imagery. I collaborated with a radiologist who was so helpful and provided me with anonymous scans and my own brain scan. I had a CET scan of a thorax, which I was able to 3D render with medical software and print out onto perspex using a home printer. I chopped up the prints and when I stuck  them to the wall I realised the lights above were casting shadows resulting in a shadow-y butterfly-y piece. It was at an interesting time because the piece involves lungs and is about something very tangible becoming intangible, referencing ideas of lost touch. I reflected afterwards and thought, Okay, this is at a time where there's a virus that's attacking your lungs and, you know, we're all deprived of touch which is something that plays such an important role in our day to day lives. So whether that was subconscious or not, I don't really know. I would really like to resolve it, screen printing it onto thicker sheets of perspex.

‘Transcendence’ 2020, Digital Print on Perspex

80 x 90 cm

Photo courtesy of Anna Mays

DA:  Could you tell me a bit more about your practice?

AM:  Yeah! So, I make work that circulates around themes of the human body and the position of the body in contemporary Western society; how our perspective on it is being shaped by rapidly advancing technologies and science and medicine. I also try to explore some of the ideas around the synthetic and transformational body. I explore the internal and external body through digital realms such as the microscopic and radiological where the body is in an infinite and timeless state. But, also through more physical work, which have intimate, raw and direct values and that incorporate transitory materials, subject to time, decay and change. I combine those avenues of making together to form strange relationships between internal, external, and micro/macro. I look at the micro as a little universe of cells and enzymes and stuff that lives inside us and the macro being the outside world. I feel like today we're so absorbed in the macro that we completely forget about our internal bodies until we're reminded of it in the case of something being wrong, like we're sick and then we freak out, because we're so detached and disconnected from it. It's that feeling of detachment and the idea of our insides being this unknown space that I try to explore in my work.

DA:  So many things you said there resonate with my work!

AM:  *laughs* I love that. 

DA:  Can you speak a bit more about your process?

AM:  Yeah. I have an etched steel plate, which I use to cast sheets of latex like for my light boxes. I would start off with an imprint of my body on fabric, which I’d then expose, in screen printing, and then print. Then I’d scan it, extract it, fragment it and expose it again, repeating the process. Finally I’d screen print varnish onto the steel plate to etch.

DA:  I think I'm following, it's sounds very complicated! When you're making the imprint onto the fabric, are you painting yourself? Painting the fabric? 

AM:  I cover myself in oil, print my body onto the fabric and then dust the sheet with graphite and charcoal, and then the image will appear. Then that will block out the light when I'm exposing it for screen printing and form the image. I use these etching plates to then rub with graphite and pigment and dust and ash and then I pour latex on top of it. So I end up with these prints trapped in latex. Then latex as material is just yeah, well its non rigid so I can make my light boxes from it, and do weird things with it.

Screen printed imprint on tracing paper rubbed with graphite, ash and dust, photo courtesy of Anna Mays

DA:  Does it degrade?

AM:  Yeah, it does. I've already seen my sheets start to change, which I really like because they've got this life of their own that I can't control. The idea of using the latex is to reference the real the living body, something actually changing. I then to use that against digital work, which is the complete opposite.

DA:  I think it works really well having that contrast. It's interesting what you're saying about the digital having an infinite quality to it because there's so much inbuilt obsolescence within technology, and we’re constantly upgrading to the newest format or device. It's strange how things disappear in a way that can be hidden from us.

AM:  Yeah, that's a really interesting way of looking at it. I've never thought of that before, actually. I guess I'm purely looking at the way the body transforms from the physical into the digital and the reaction I have towards how it changes, or in fact doesn’t change. I can return to the same digital image and it won’t have changed whereas my actual body will.  The reason I use my own body all the time is because it's accessible to me. I can imprint my body, look at it through the microscopic, and through a CET of my own brain. It's unusual having different bodily relationships to these processes. The imprint is quite an intimate thing. I actually feel quite connected to it because it’s a result of direct contact. With the microscope, I guess there is feelings of distance and detachment because there is literal separation put in place through the lens and from the screen. They can look quite dreamlike. Looking at my brain through the CET is almost the scariest. It's really a reduction of me into this vessel for someone else to understand in the most medical terms. It completely separates the person from their body and there is a total sense of depersonalisation, it’s simplified and broken down as much as possible. It becomes this really futuristic looking thing.

DA:  Yeah, totally. You're never gonna look at that MRI and be like, that's my prefrontal cortex!

AM:  Yeah, exactly.

DA:  Maybe this would be a good opportunity for you to talk about your use of different media a bit more? I’m thinking of the piece you make with the film and plastic sheets. 

AM:  Yeah, that’s ‘Clinical’. I don't want my work to be about the figurative body, it is more about expanding beyond its physical state and to look at deeper questions beyond that. So I feel like sometimes the right thing to do is for the work to be more experienced, rather than seen. Installation feels like the right way to communicate some of the ideas behind my work. When there's the combination of senses involved, it can allow sometimes for deeper, well more unique, takes on a piece of work. Sometimes you want to overwhelm or disorientate that’s not to say its necessarily always going to be pleasant! A lot of the work I make is to try describe how it's our occupation of the body that comes to perceive and understand the sensory world. 

Video of ‘Clinical’ by Anna Mays

DA:  Yeah I completely agree that if someone's having a physical experience with something, you're getting so much more, you're getting all of that sensory input. It completely makes sense with the things that you're exploring. What is it that you're working on at the moment?

AM:  I'm making an 8ft light box, big enough to step inside. It’s taking ages because the latex sheets have to dry outside, which is not ideal during the winter months. The idea for it combines two previous pieces of work that I've made; 'Expansion', which is a latex light box and that installation ‘Clinical’. The idea is that you'll step into the light box and the latex is illuminated. It transforms from looking like decaying flesh to looking a bit like alabaster stone, which is this marble that's used in sacred places. It looks like it has some sense of importance, which comments on that celebration of life. For 'Clinical' I collaborated with my boyfriend Jack Idiens who is a sound artist, and we made this body-scape from recordings of bodily sounds, like scratching, chewing and swallowing, which he then synthesised and abstracted. We're gonna make another one for this light box that will be interactive allowing you to change the bodily sounds.

DA:  That's very cool.

AM:  I struggled with the latex for so long. I had such an attachment to them because they were such intimate things. I kept having ideas for presentation and quite often the effect was gore and horror and that was really not what I was trying to do. Thankfully, the light box just happened one day.

DA:  Were there any particular artists you were looking at? Or did it spontaneously happen?

AM:  Spontaneously. But, now I'm actually thinking about it, a friend of mine Emily Diamond who was studying sculpture at Brighton while I was there and is the latex Queen of Brighton, casts trees whole trees with latex. She had an exhibition where she had her massive tree cast and lit it in some way with a mirror underneath it. The work she makes is amazing. Yeah, inspiring for sure.

Anna casting latex outside, photo courtesy of Anna Mays

DA:  Are there any other artists are you particularly take inspiration from?

AM:  I'll start by saying Dorothy Cross, an Irish artist. I remember when I first started making work with the latex and was looking inside ears and stuff, I was thinking, Okay, this is getting weird. Maybe I was somewhat embarrassed of it at some points and didn't really know how to show people. But she helped me to embrace the strange, she uses things like cow udders in her work! I remember listening to an interview with her and at that point thinking, Yeah, fuck it! 

DA:  Go for it!

AM:  Exactly. Yeah, so she's amazing. Camilla Hanney is another one. She’s actually my best friend's sister but she reminds me of Dorothy Cross in some ways. She does really beautiful installations. The ones that particularly amaze me are her floor installations where she dusts bone, dust, ash and I’m pretty sure blood as well through lace and makes these impermanent, fragile installations on the ground. They're absolutely gorgeous. 

DA:  It sounds amazing! 

AM:  Yeah, she's really interesting. Another three ladies are Helen Chadwick, Ana Mendieta, and Eva Hesse. All died far too young sadly. But yeah, they're incredibly inspirational.

DA:  A great bunch! This is a difficult question – what's your favourite piece that you've made?

AM:  I'd say 'Expansion', the light box. I think particularly because I struggled with it for so long. It's from that I've had the most inspiration for future pieces, seeing how it transformed from something quite grotesque to something that felt quite meaningful. It felt like an important moment for me, trying to address those deeper questions of being human, not just about our physicality, but it got me on to thinking about the stars and religion and things that we don't know. 

‘Expansion’ 2020, Latex, Ash, Dust, Pigment, Graphite, Charcoal, Wood & lamp

80 x 120 cm

Photo courtesy of Anna Mays

DA:  What drew you to making work about the body? Was there something particular that triggered your interest into that disassociation that we have in terms of medicine and technology?

AM:  When I was in school and in my foundation I was most engaged in drawing people, figures and bodies. Then that led me onto doing imprinting. I think it was the primal effect of imprinting and what that felt like that drew me in. I remember watching Anthony Gormley speaking in a documentary about how art began, how people were trying to leave traces of themselves to try to understand their place in the world and to understand time. I thought that was really interesting. My dissertation spoke about the imprint quite a lot, how you leave a trace and it is yours, but it's also not yours at the same time. That something that is detached and separated from you is still yours. I kept developing the work until I got on to using the digital, I think I began to feel my own sense detachment looking at the body in this way. Maybe it is more personal than I thought it was. I used to be a hypochondriac and I would think I was dying all the time. I was always sending myself to the doctors thinking that there was something really wrong with me. So maybe it's just me trying to connect back a bit more. 

Decaying latex, photo courtesy of Anna Mays

DA:  Do you feel that you're a lot less like that now that you feel more connected to your body? 

AM:  Definitely. I think that probably came with age because I only started making work about it slightly after being that way. I think another trigger was doing research into things like transhumanism and seeing how we're living so much longer and how the human body body is actually changing with technology. Honestly, there are so many amazing benefits of it, but then there's also that point where you start to feel a bit skeptical and just hope it goes in the right way. I actually saw one thing, which I thought was really disturbing. It’s a patch that you put on your skin with an LED display that would show your heartbeat, your blood pressure and apparently your emotions as well so it could tell you when you're angry or stressed. I thought that that's the pinnacle, this definition of being detached from yourself. You know, when you can't tell how you're feeling? Well obviously sometimes you can't tell how we're feeling but not to the point that we need a little device to tell me okay, I must be sad now.

DA:  Next level mood rings! I don't know if you had those when you were younger? *laughs*

AM:  *laughs* I was so into mood rings! 

DA:  It's weird, isn't it? All these things we want to do to ourselves, all this measuring...Well Anna thank you so much. It's been so lovely meeting you. 

AM:  Thanks for talking to me. 

Find out more about Anna’s work:

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Latex and microscopic print installation, photo courtesy of Anna Mays

Suzi Morris

Damaris Athene: Suzi can you tell me a bit about yourself?

Suzi Morris: I was born in Ayr in my grandparent’s house and educated in Glasgow. My mother who was also an artist, died when I was fifteen after a long illness, so I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. I come from a medico - scientific, art background. My father was a scientist so I grew up surrounded by National Geographic magazines and science journals, which inspired me to see more of the world. I left home when I was just 17.

DA: And where is Ayr?

SM: Ayr is a seaside town on the west coast of Scotland, 25 miles south of Glasgow. When I left Scotland, I spent a year in Carlisle on a foundation course before moving down to London to what was then Kingston Polytechnic, where I studied Illustration and Design for my BA; but I always knew deep down that I wanted to be a painter. I don’t know whether it was just at that time or in those days, but back then being a painter wasn’t seen as a proper job.

DA: It still isn’t to be honest. You still have people that will think, ‘Oh I need to do Graphic Design, because it’s applied’ rather than pursuing Fine Art, which is their true passion. It’s sad.

SM: It is sad. I’ve always had that love of paint since I was a child. When I was a student I took some really basic jobs and lived in sometimes-awful accommodation so that I could afford to buy quality art materials. At school I was forever in the art room painting and my reports always said ‘Susan has such a vivid imagination’. I think that was down to having this sensitivity to unseen energies, often common among artists. When you just absorb too much at times.

DA: I’m the same.

SM: Really? And we both share an interest in exploring the corporeal and the abstraction of the human landscape! I think artists have a tendency to be sensitive. It’s one of the reasons why I have to be solitary when I’m painting.

DA: How did your life lead up to becoming a full-time painter?

SM: I worked in a design consultancy for a while but I didn’t have a passion for the corporate world and I was always more driven to paint. During the eighties, trompe l'oeil made a come back so I spent some time undertaking painting commissions in peoples’ homes. I was married for a long time and ended up going overseas seeking out opportunities to teach art. I really wanted to see the world.

DA: Whereabouts did you travel to?

SM: I’ve spent time in India, the Philippines, and Africa when it was still dealing with the AIDS epidemic in the nineties. As a consequence of the disease being so misunderstood initially, there were orphanages full of small children with HIV who had been abandoned by their families. I wasn’t painting for myself at that time but I loved sharing materials for mark making and watching children’s innate creativity. I think that some of the ordeals that I experienced through travel have made me who I am. Perhaps why I have no desire to paint the ‘visible’ world? In later years I worked in art direction for film, which allowed me to keep travelling. It was while I was working in film that I was encouraged to pursue my painting on a full-time basis. There comes a time when you’ve got to follow what’s in here *points to heart*. I feel that finally I’m doing what I want to be doing. In 2012, I met Eileen Cooper, Keeper of the Royal Academy and she suggested I apply to The City and Guilds of London Art School, and from there I went on to undertake the doctorate.

DA: How did you find your MA at City and Guilds?

SM: It was rather like joining the special forces of art schools! I had been out of education for some time so it was pretty challenging. I would be working on PowerPoint presentations every week and used to be in the studio from 8am until 8.30pm. I loved it though and it really helped to develop my practice.

DA: God, every week. That’s intense! And your doctorate at the University of East London. Can you tell me a bit about that?

SM:  While I was on my MA, I had been fortunate enough to meet two leading German companies, Schmincke and Da Vinci. I was doing some filming for them and they kindly supported my doctorate. I love learning and felt at the time that I had only just scratched the surface in understanding my practice so undertaking the doctorate seemed like a natural progression. I was also interested in delving deeper into the concept of the Sublime - my own life experiences seemed to fit with this notion in so many ways. My director of studies and my supervisors at UEL were very insightful at helping me to realise just how much the language of medicine, genomics and clinical virology inform the decisions that I’m making in painting. Then began my relationship with Imperial College who continue to be really supportive. UEL was three of the toughest years of my life, yet three of the best.

DA: How wonderful and such an achievement.

SM: I feel that I began to find a truth in my painting that’s been incredibly hard to reach.

DA: Can you tell me more about your practice itself?

SM: Scientific research is a stimulus for me, which often provides triggers to inform new work.  Plus I’ve always loved the qualities of oil paint. How pigment changes depending on its environment and how it can be manipulated to behave so differently. It’s so unpredictable, rather like the body. I work in multiple layers of translucent glazes, building the image up over long periods of time. Parts of the image get obscured through editing the work while other parts are destroyed and then resurrected from earlier layers. It’s not until the work is finished that I appreciate the art historical references, theory, personal experience and research that’s fed into it. The connection between the body and the performance of painting is fundamental. The imagination is massive and there’s so much I still want to do. I need another hundred years! *laughs*

DA: *laughs*

SM: It’s a bodily experience painting. The title of my thesis is ‘The Viral Sublime and the Bodily Experience of Painting’. It was through delving deeper into my practice that I realised how the body and painting contribute to a physical artwork. Merleau-Ponty writes of how our bodies are integrated into the fabric of the world and how painters are able to live purely in this enmeshment with the world and express it visually in their works (Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind, 2c, see 161d). I’m not a great one for theory but I enjoy Merleau-Ponty. I also draw connections from American artist Ross Bleckner, and Santiago Ramón y Cajal. I so admire his drawings related to neuroscience.  I made a painting recently; ‘The Burden of the Dendrite’.

DA: Good title! *laughs*

SM: Dendritic ulcers! *laughs* Another painting - ‘The Naked Virus’. There’s so much emotion in that painting. I realised once it was finished that it was deeply connected with the anxiety over my eye problems at that time. It marked a turning point in my research regarding the part that the subconscious plays in painting. It’s like when you go to the studio, you start off with five or six people with you in your mind, and one by one they leave until you’re left with your body and your subconscious. If I’m lucky I leave the studio too! *laughs* Then you never know what’s going to happen, but on reflection the painting always seems to relate to what I’ve been researching. It’s fascinating. I love being an abstract artist because you never know what you’re going to get. I like how James Elkins describes painting as ‘liquid thought’.

DA: Oh wow, that’s beautiful. It’s like you’re channeling your thought through your body.

SM: Yeah. I’ve started in the last year to use parts of the body to manipulate the paint. Exploring paints inherent qualities and working more intuitively to see what comes.

DA: You’ve touched on this a bit but how do you usually work?

SM: Alone in the studio with either Ennio Morricone or Chopin’s nocturnes… something classical to take me away someplace else. The light and the line are the two fundamentals that always seem to remain.

DA: The one over there hasn’t got a line yet.

SM: Not yet, no.

DA: Is the line the final thing?

SM: Often, yes. They are like the minimalist figure in the landscape. Nodding to Modernism and the colour field painters, namely Barnet Newman. I call them biomarkers because biomarkers in science are used for many things, one being to measure our individual susceptibility to things, which I find fascinating. I’m interested in the body and the corporeal. Our bodies have such wisdom if we can just access it. I love reading about epigenetics, and how through editing the human genome science is changing the face of medicine as we know it. It makes me think of Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ where the natural processes of birth, ageing and death are no longer recognisable. What might it be like to be human in the future?

DA: Completely. Do you not fear that at all? Is it only excitement you feel?

SM: There’s a bit of fear since germ-line engineering in the wrong hands could be annihilating. But fear of dystopian change shouldn’t blind us to the benefits to society, as this type of science could signal the end of so many inherited devastating genetic diseases. With gene editing technology scientists can sever the DNA of certain viruses, so perhaps many conditions, which are incurable today, will become curable. I’m hopeful that in my lifetime CRISPR technology might release me from the virus that causes Keratitis. It’s a virus that I fight with on a daily basis and have done for decades. Science is achieving incredible things just now in curing certain cancers and other deadly diseases. It’s an exciting time to respond to the science of my time in terms of my practice.

DA: It makes me think, what would happen if no one died of diseases? The population would grow exponentially, and we wouldn’t be able to support ourselves. It’s difficult!

SM: It is a daunting prospect. When I read about science extending the human life span through deciphering the genetic codes responsible for controlling limb regeneration it’s like the stuff of science fiction. Whatever would happen to the pensions crisis!

DA: Yeah, exactly! It’s a pretty big problem! But then I guess if you were coming to later life in a healthier state… it’s just prolonging the inevitable surely.

SM: Yeah, people would live a lot longer but as you say a healthier old age would be better.

DA: But would you be immortal if you could be?

SM: Oh no, no. I wouldn’t want to live forever, would you?

DA: No! Not at all.

SM: No, I’m exhausted *laughs* But I’d like at least another 20/30 years of painting if that’s possible?

DA: Hopefully you will! I guess with your eyes as well, how much does it affect your painting? 

SM: It does affect my painting in that I paint how I see. My long-term fascination with blur against sharpness maybe due to my left eye having scarring in the line of vision causing permanent blurring, but I also have areas of sharpness. So as long as medicine can keep the virus in its latent state my eye will be fine. It’s just my left eye that’s the real problem. So, I like to believe that I’ll always be able to paint.

DA: Fingers crossed.

SM: I won’t deny that’s it’s a huge anxiety.

DA: Yeah, for anyone, let alone an artist where there are more levels of anxiety to it. Sight is integral…Can you tell me about your gallery representation? How did you start your relationship with NoonPowell Fine Art?

SM: Rachel the gallery director was looking for new artists at the time. She had seen my work online and was so enthusiastic about it.

DA: Do you have any upcoming shows or anything you’re specifically working towards?

SM: I’ve had a really busy year with shows. I’ve just finished a painting that has sold to a film producer in Los Angles so that’s great. I’m also going to be exhibiting in a group show coming up at Mall Galleries through NoonPowell, and I’m preparing to present a talk about how medical research inspires my practice, at Imperial College this September. The Department of Medicine have been really supportive throughout my doctorate so I’m looking forward to engaging the public through becoming more involved at Imperial as artist in residence.

DA: That’s wonderful, congratulations! What’s your favourite piece that you’ve made? I know it’s a tricky question.

SM: It is, because they all have a part of me. Perhaps ‘Truth Lies and Hidden Realms’ and the other is ‘The In-between’ which is now in a private collection. I was trying to think about why they’re favourites. Possibly some of it is the time that I spend with a piece and whether it becomes a turning point in my practice. All the work is very labour intensive and these particular pieces were painted over two years. ‘The Inbetween’ was painted at such a difficult time in my life. I had lost two studio spaces because they were sublets and I was trying to sell my property in the country and find somewhere to rent in London at the height of the property boom in 2014. At one point I was actually living in my studio in Peckham. There was a huge sense of solace in being in my studio painting. I think studio time is really precious anyway because we all have to do admin and all the other stuff that comes with being a professional artist.  The relationship with both these paintings during that period was very intimate. This can make it hard to let a painting go, but at the end of the day, it’s that sense of solace that I feel in making a painting that I want to transmit out into the world. I always remember Eileen Cooper’s advice to ‘not become collectors of your own work’. Her words always ring in my ears whenever I find it hard to let go of a piece. We live in such a chaotic horrid world that’s why I’m doing it at the end of the day.

Come and see Suzi’s work in ‘Sensibilities of Belonging’ at the Mall galleries, The Mall, London SW1 from 11th to 16th September 2018. Click here for more information.

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Find out more about Suzi’s work:

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Mellissa Fisher

Damaris Athene: Can you tell me a bit about yourself?

Mellissa Fisher: I'm a Bio artist at the moment. I'm from Dorset and moved to London to study illustration in 2009. I was about to drop out and then I found a lecturer and artist in the university called Heather Barnett, who is the pathway leader at Central Saint Martins (CSM) Art & Science MA. She was a photography tutor at the time and she started an interdisciplinary art and science module called Broad Vision. The first time I looked down a microscope I thought, ‘I'm sold! I want to work with the invisible world!’

DA: Where was your degree?

MF: Westminster. Illustration wasn't for me, I should’ve done Fine Art, but I was told that I wouldn't get a job with a Fine Art degree. I'm grateful that that happened as if it hadn’t I wouldn't have gone onto the path that I'm on now. The ‘Microbial Me’ project came from the Art & Science module, as did a collaborator.

DA: It really began everything!

MF: 2012, that's where it all began. Then I saw the head of MA Art & Science at CSM, Nathan, at a gallery and he asked where my application for the Masters was. I thought, ‘I should do a Masters now’. Then I got sick of London and moved here (Margate) and I'm so much happier. Kent is the place to be. People say it's like Shoreditch, but it's not, it's much better. It’s more, as Tracey Emin says, ‘raunchy’.

DA: Can you tell us more about your practice. You said you're a Bio artist but can you expand on that a bit more?

MF: I like to say I'm a Bio artist at the moment because I think as an artist you're going to forever change. For about five/six years I've been making sculptures with living organisms, mainly my bacteria. I wanted to create work to make people see the invisible world that they have on them that they don't really think about - out of sight out of mind – and to make it less scary. Without it we'd be really ill and die. The magic of time-lapse photography is setting it all up and coming back a couple of weeks later. Putting it all together it takes ages so it's a real reward when you've watched the film, you're like, 'Woaaaah. That happened I was right next to it'. I relate to Rachel Whiteread in that respect, because she makes work about the secret life of things and I'm the secret life of invisible things. The mushrooms are a new thing that I still haven't developed properly yet.

DA: How do you usually work when you're making the agar?

MF: It depends. If it's nutrient agar, which I usually use with plants, like in the cress videos, I can do it in the studio. If I'm growing actual bacteria you have to treat it as a biohazard, even though it's probably not. It's all the same bacteria you have on you all the time, just grown at a higher concentration. It smells horrible. It must be in a controlled area just in case. There's always risk assessments when working with science and you have to think of the worst possible scenario that could happen.

DA: Do you have a lab that you do it in?

MF: I used to have constant access to a lab at Westminster. I was meant to make my body in bacteria for my degree show, but then five months before my show Mark (Professor Mark Clements, my collaborator) told me he got a new job in Lincoln. I broke down a bit and then had to think of something else. The year before I'd gone on a residency in Canada and been exposed to all these different types of mushrooms and fungi. I was interested by the Reishi mushroom, because it's known in Asian culture to be the mushroom of immortality. It increases the amount of macrophages in white blood cells which boosts your immune system. All the work I make is based on myself, and ‘Immortal Ground’ was based on me exploring immortality through nature in a concrete environment -  the crossing at King's Cross, Central Saint Martins. It’s a play with immortality and nature, and if nature is immortal.

DA: Well are we immortal by being carried on through the bacteria in the soil that lingers after we’re buried?

MF: Yeah exactly. It was an intermission in the work I've been doing with bacteria because I didn't have any lab space. Now I do have lab spaces with collaborators in Manchester and Berlin, and Mark's now coming back to London. It’s difficult to get access when you don't know anyone.

DA: Manchester and Berlin, that's very far to go.

MF: It is but it's all about the grants you get and how you apply them. Grants and networking are the key to doing art, as is studying and researching.

DA: How did you find the MA Art & Science course at CSM?

MF: It was the best two years of my life. I learnt so much about my practice, about myself and about how other people work. I wanted my MA to be a more positive experience than my BA and I worked really hard. It’s about 20 times harder than a BA, which most people don’t realise. The first week I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’. I was scared but you have to pursue through it. As artists we tend to almost kill ourselves making work but the most important thing I learnt was to have a break because it can cause a lot of damage to you and your artwork. I keep in contact with the people that are studying there. It's a great community of people. It's very small the art and science world and it's predominately female as well which I find interesting.

DA: That is interesting. I wonder what that is?.... How did you find the change from illustration to Fine Art?

MF: I didn't really change as I didn't ever draw. I didn't know how to draw at all so I made sculptures – the course was illustration and visual communication. What got me into the Art & Science was a project with my Uni hamster, Bovril, may she rest in peace. She fascinated me because she was very smart and she knew her name. I made a maze to try and teach her how to follow colour and scent. It worked! I eventually learnt how to draw in my second year I thought, ‘Come on you're doing illustration degree you've got to be able to draw something!’. I had a sketchbook for a whole summer which I drew in when I wasn’t doing anything. I taught myself and got this weird style, like automatic drawing. Surrealism is the main influence in all the work I make. René Magritte is one of my favourite artists of all time.

DA: Interesting. Do you ever display the drawings?

MF: I’m not very confident about them. It’s personal because the sketchbook I work in is small, A6, and I draw in it when I feel like crap. It makes me vulnerable to show my drawing but it’s my aim to do it a bit more this year.

DA: I look forward to seeing them some place soon!...What have you been doing since graduating in 2015?

MF: I'll start with the obvious one which is Microbial Michael, the BBC project. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. It was extremely ambitious and no one has ever done it before. I had no reference and I had no idea if it was going to work.

Images of 'Microbial Michael' courtesy the artist

DA: What aspects were difficult when working with TV?

MF: When you work with media they don't see your work as artwork. They see it as a prop for something they're doing, they are the ones making the artwork, the film. I didn't realise that was the case and I wanted to make a life-size agar sculpture. I'd been planning it for years and it was meant to be my body, but for TV purposes it had to be Michael Mosely’s because he was the presenter. We only had 2 months to do it and I needed 6. The most challenging part was the casting because we (SPACER_) had to make it the right way up - so when we took off the cast the agar was there. Agar is thinner than water and it had to be water tight. We made a Petri dish base for it out of resin and then we did a rubber mould over it. We had to do everything like five steps behind and ahead at the same time and it was really really difficult. I've made a film about the process too.

DA: Yeah, I watched it, the time-lapse. Even watching that I thought, ‘I don't really understand what's going on!’. It looks mad!

MF: Yeah it was mad. We did all of that in two weeks! One of the mistakes I made with the casting was to not make a skeleton for the inside so there’d be less agar and less health and safety risk. I thought it would be fine – let’s just make it simple. I estimated around 30 litres of agar and it was actually 160 without the skeleton! When I told Mark he said, ‘If that was to fall over and crack open there would be enough bacteria on there to kill someone. We can't do this.’ It had got to the point where I was so stressed I couldn’t cry anymore. We had to delay the project for about a week. When we put the skeleton in, it reduced it down to 60 litres, which was fine. It was very mentally straining. Unfortunately we had to dispose of the agar body for health and safety reasons. I couldn't throw it away myself because I wasn't trained and that was a big issue for me. From day one it was completely out of my control. I'm sad that the sculpture is gone because it would have lasted 10 years or more. The project was extremely exhausting and mentally challenging, this is the first time I’ve spoken about it properly as I had a difficult time accepting the failure of the project, I’ve only just recovered from it and am now starting to see that it was a very successful project despite having to destroy it early on.

DA: Thank you for the privilege! What else have you been doing since recovering?

MF: I've been trying to get back it get back to basics. I moved to Ramsgate. I was doing lots of workshops, going into forests to collect specimens to study for inspiration and trying to recover. I was trying to get as much inspiration as I could but then at the same time I was forcing myself so it didn't work. Saying that, I have given talks as well. I went away for a month to New York and I went to Canada on a residency where I met some amazing artists. I also showed a film on slime mould in London where the slime grows over an agar sculpture.

DA: What is slime mould?

MF: Slime mould is Physarum polycephalum. It’s an organism that communicates with itself to get food. It's very intelligent and lots of artists are working with it. You find in forests and it's safe to work with it but it smells like sweaty armpits and escapes from it’s container to find food! Time-lapse is easy with it because it grows very quickly. The footage of myself in the film was when I was depressed. It was when the attacks were happening in London and Manchester. I was in New York and I felt disconnected from home but also connected as well. I was crying so much and to stop myself from crying I decided to film myself. With the science work I do there's no emotion in it. Art is meant to be emotional and I haven't done emotional work for so long. I’m trying to do that more this year and trying to get back to the core of myself because everything is about myself in different ways… For three months I've been writing applications like a madwoman. It's laborious and you get about 1 out of 100. That philosophical thick skin is hard, especially when you feel like crap. The amount of times throughout my degree I thought, ‘I don't want to be an artist anymore’, and then my tutors would say, ‘Well you are one. You can't turn back now’. They’re right and you just have to keep going. People don't think it's hard.

DA: People have no knowledge at all about what's it's like to try and be an artist.

MF: It's like naivety, isn't it? As an artist you have to be business minded, an accountant, everything!

DA: Yeah, marketing, PR.

MF: Yeah, everything! Lots of things I find quite difficult, like social media I'm a bit crap at. People joke that I should get a PA!

DA: Then you need be earning enough money to pay someone.

MF: I had a student from CSM contact me probably about six months ago asking if she could be my PA for free. I didn’t want her to work for free. Free is not good. I think artists should always be paid.

DA: Alas the reality doesn't align.

MF: Hopefully it will one day. I get these e-mails from places saying, ‘We want you to be a part of this show but you have to pay €500 euros’. I respond back with a hashtag saying, ‘Pay fucking Artists’.

DA: You don't sugar coat it!

MF: Not at all because they need to hear it. They might not even bother with it but I think if enough people say it.. I think the only acceptable things to pay for are residences or £10 to £20 entry fee for a competition. But £500. That’s ridiculous.

DA: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

MF: I've been researching Tracey Emin and I'm relating to her, which is frustrating me because for so long I couldn’t stand her.

DA: It's interesting that in the slime mould video piece you are showing more of yourself and straight away it made me think of Tracey Emin. She’s very self-confessional. She lays it all out.

MF: Yeah, she's raw.

DA: You've kept it all in and now you're letting a little bit out.

MF: I think it's because when I was younger I was always criticised for being open and honest. I've got in trouble for being blunt before. When I got the commission with the Eden project I kept my myself in. Now I’m learning that it doesn't matter. Some people's ideas of ‘proper’ is different to others, but people, especially artists should always speak their mind as long as it doesn’t upset anyone. That’s what art is about, speaking your mind and provoking thought in others.

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Find out more about Mellissa Fisher's work:

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Watch 'Microbial Michael' on BBC iPlayer

Natalia González Martín

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Natalia González Martín in her studio

Damaris Athene Can you tell me a bit about yourself?

Natalia González Martín I grew up in Spain in a very small village. I went to school there and that’s quite a boring part of my life, until I was 18 when I came to London for my foundation diploma at City and Guilds, where I also did my BA. Now I’m trying to be a practicing artist, trying to live off that and see what happens. Complicated! With part-time jobs, little things, whatever comes. Recently I opened this space in my own home to promote the work of other artists and curators.

DA What’s that called?

NGM Subsidiary Projects. Some friends and I wanted to do an exhibition and we set up a space in my house. It’s too perfect not to continue doing it so I’ve gone further with it. More than just putting my own work and my friends’ work. I find other people and it’s a great way of getting in touch with different artist that I didn’t know about before. I’m not asking economically for anything, it’s art for the sake of art. I think everyone after Uni goes through a period of disenchantment with the art world. I wanted to make something genuine and for the process of experimentation. You can take a risk and make something that doesn’t work at all and you don’t have the pressure of having to answer to a big gallery. I think it’s relieving to have a space like that that isn’t just your studio.

DA Can you tell me about your practice?

NGM The very basics of it is archaeology. Around 2/3 years ago I realised that was what linked everything together. I had always been extremely interested in materiality in a very visceral way. My dad is a vet so I’ve seen a lot of horrid, horrid carcases through his work. I always saw it as something quite appealing and, colour palette wise, quite beautiful. I incorporated that with artefacts and history through objects. Now it’s turning into this experimentation of the things man have made with their hands. Forms we’ve been drawn to and ways of representation of materials, but giving it that organic quality that I cannot seem to get away from. Which makes sense with my idea of archaeology itself, because I see it as nothing stable, something quite alive. Not in a beautiful sense, in a precarious way. It has so much potential to decay and be forgotten and die.

View of Natalia González Martín's Studio

DA How do you usually work? You graduated in the Summer of 2017, and you’ve been working as an artist since….

NGM It’s hard to keep up the momentum after Uni and I think everyone finds themselves in this place of ‘What were all of those ideas?’ ‘Where have they gone?’ ‘I had so many ideas for the Degree Show’ and now they go back to basics. That’s what I’ve done - going back to the first sources that inspired me and continuing to analyse them. Maybe it’s because there’s no pressure of having a mark on what you’re doing and it’s finally more for yourself. It doesn’t last but you’ve got this period just for yourself. It’s enjoyable to go to the most naïve, basic aspect of that. ‘I’m just going to do this’ - there is a reason but at the beginning it’s ‘because’ and then it all comes together. It’s challenging after Uni.

DA What were the things you were drawn back to?

NGM I had completely left out figuration and now I see myself representing certain images that I had in the back of my head, trying to do them accurately or just replicating an image, which at the end of Uni I was almost against. Like, ‘Oh no, you cannot just make an image and that’s it’. I find it so vital for going back to progress somehow. I don’t know, maybe I had left out so many materials because I had also thought that they’re not professional enough or…I don’t know, you have that pressure when you’re at Uni, especially towards the Degree Show, and you have to deliver this very stable product. It doesn’t have to be that stable after which is nice.

DA Some freedom.

NGM Yes, in many ways. In materials, in presentation. It cannot go on forever otherwise it’ll all crumble, but for a bit I think it’s healthy.

View of Natalia González Martín's Studio

DA You said you’d been working Part-time trying to support things. Is it a patchwork of work to try and pay your rent?

NGM Yes, I'm a part-time Art Teacher, doing freelance private classes. I’ve also been working at Block 336, at the private views. It’s nice because it doesn’t take too much time from the studio. However, I am looking into getting something more constant. I had a bad experience just after Uni. I was freaking out looking for jobs and I found this one Photographer job. Everything seemed ideal, apart from the fact that it was a recent graduate job and the pay was nothing. Legally there are some things you cannot do for free and I feel people really abuse recent graduates. It was taking all my time, some days were 10 hours long. I chose the studio and not being able to pay rent!

DA It’s tricky, a lot of the friends who I studied with have stopped making work - they had to earn money and when you lose momentum it’s so hard to start up again.

NGM Almost impossible. I think we invested too much money in University to let it go. I’d rather starve for a few months than loose the dynamic of coming to the studio.

DA What difference have you found between studying in Spain and studying here?

NGM The thing is in Spain I’ve never studied Fine Art in my A levels (Bachillerato). You can find one that is artistic but because it’s Spain, it’s a very old minded country, and it doesn’t have a good reputation. I chose what we call ‘pure letters’ - Latin, Greek, History of Art. Fine Art in Spain is very academicist and not conceptual at all. No self-development of practice. You don’t have your own studio. The exam, for example, will be copying a torso very accurately, which is more of a skill than a profession. Then at the same time I’ve seen some things lacking in the English system - there's not much emphasis in the history of Art itself, which I missed. I think it would be great to do a course in Spain and learn everything until the 18th century and then come to England to learn all the rest. So, just a bit of a balance. I’ve seen what is missing in the two of them.

DA How have you found living over here? You’ve been here for 4 years now.

NGM It sounds a bit like the typical story – a small village girl coming to a big city, but it didn’t feel like that. It felt like the right place. Some people say, ‘Oh in London you can feel lonely in such a big city’, but I don’t feel that as much. There’s too much going on. I think it’s too easy to get by. I really like this city. Never going to leave until they kick me out. They’re trying but no way. I’m waiting for Theresa’s call!

DA *laughs*… What have you been doing since your graduating?

NGM I had a solo show at St Catherine’s Church, in Neasden. The building is so beautiful I almost didn’t want to put anything in it! I could put up some of my pieces but I had to keep it palatable for the church goers. You don’t want to disturb too much and it’s tricky because you do want to put across a message that’s risky.

DA Are you religious yourself?

NGM I am not religious. In my work there is a lot of religion, because of my Catholic background. We love the icons! I think that comes across in my work. I’m drawn to the aesthetic of processions and celebrations.

Natalia González Martín in her studio

DA What have you been working on recently?

NGM I’ve been really interested in marbling and limbs. I have a need to completely cover something in marbling and maybe put it in weird spaces. I’m into the idea of art in non-art spaces. There is this Instagram profile called Great Art in Ugly Rooms where they post pictures of famous artworks in motels or toilets or McDonald's, etc... It’s such a great concept! It goes as well with the idea that I put into my work of the value of art. Is it the piece? Is it where the piece is? Is it what has been said about the piece? I’m sceptical that it’s not the object itself at all. Maybe changing the context will enhance that?

DA Have you got any spaces in mind?

NGM Well the other day I put some clay sculptures in Sainsbury’s. I took some milk off the shelves and just displayed them.

DA Ah, brilliant!

NGM More than the display itself it was the peoples’ reactions. No one, literally no one, was weirded out that I was taking these big sculptures out of my bag, placing them there and looking at them. Everyone went through them to get their milk and went back to the queue. None of the Sainsbury’s people said anything. So that was surprising – no impact at all.

DA Wow, do you think they just were too busy to bother? They thought – Oh that’s weird – but didn’t think much of it. That’s so interesting.

NGM I don’t know if it’s something to do with England. If you see a horse riding a bicycle no one will look. They’re not surprised…It’s not like not surprised it’s very polite. I think it would really change if I did it in Spain. I want to try it and see the peoples' reactions.

DA I think you should do it again and you should film it.

NGM Yeah, I mean I have a Sainsbury’s next to my house, I can always use it. It’s my new gallery space.

DA They might start knowing you, 'Come along at 12 o’clock on a Sunday to see the sculpture in the milk fridge!'

NGM Maybe I should advertise it! Who knows! Free marketing.

DA What have you got planned for the future?

NGM Applying to more contests and getting more of those dreadful rejection emails. I’ve learnt that we have to live with that. It’s part of it. I was considering a Masters degree but I think that England is far too expensive and I think the masters is like a business. You cannot pay that much money to receive so little space and tuition. I just feels wrong. I’m against it but at the same time I feel like it’s the only way to do it. Maybe I’ll go back on my word and do a Masters. Maybe that’s the plan.

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