ARTIST TALK Elefteria Vlavianos and Todd Fuller

Elefteria Vlavianos 'The Feeling of Memory' 2nd May to 23rd May

Todd Fuller 'Simple Love' 2nd May to 16th May

This conversation brings together Todd Fuller and Elefteria Vlavianos, to discuss two practices that, at first glance, sit quite apart, yet, in discussion, reveal a number of shared beliefs.

Moving between drawing and material-based processes, both artists reflect on how their works begin, and the role that repetition, labour, and accumulation play in shaping meaning over time. What emerges is a dialogue around making as a way of thinking, where images are not singular or fixed, but built through layering, fragmentation, and return.

Central to the conversation are questions of multiplicity and memory. Whether through the doubling of forms or the proliferation of images across a surface, both practices explore how meaning shifts when an image is repeated, extended, or reworked. Time becomes embedded in the work itself, held within the marks, the process, and the duration of making.

Rather than drawing direct parallels, the discussion opens up a shared space between the two practices, one that is shaped by process, attention, and an ongoing negotiation between control and intuition.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

People at the Eora Nation and with very respects to their elders, Harvard and Emerging. Well we're delighted to have Todd and Rhea with us today. So we have Rhea's new audio work here in the main gallery space, which for a lot of you may seem like new works, but Rhea's actually been working in this for about 15 years. Well, probably about 15 years ago, but she will tell you in a more detail about that. Then in the annex space we have the beautiful work of Todd, which some of you may have seen when it was on at an animation gallery. That was very much shown around the animation. We decided to very much concentrate on the work on paper. So I think on first glance it does seem as though Todd and Mia's practices are quite different, but as we're going to learn through this artist talk, there's a lot of things that actually tie them quite closely together in terms of process, the idea of layering and repetition, and I think the calling on memory as well. But um, I'm gonna hand over to Ptolemy to chat through a little bit for you. There will be the opportunity for questions throughout the talk and at the end, so please feel free to bombard them if you have any questions. There'll also be around at the end of the talk if you want to have a chat with them specifically about any of the words that you can.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Um we've got a few chairs. Does anyone in a chair? Would like a chair before we start?

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Get comfy, come on, get a get a chair.

SPEAKER_04 1:29

Perfect. I'm gonna hand over to you to you.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Alright. Um, thanks Louise. Um, yeah. On behalf of us as artists, I'd also like to acknowledge the traditional owners on land who which we gather. And also just thank you to M Contemporary who are fantastic gallerists and who are extremely supportive of all their artists in the stable. It's a delight to be here, and it's a delight to be given the chat the opportunity to have a chat about our work. Um, as Louise mentioned, when we sat down together, we kind of started the conversation being like, how do we sit together? And over a muffin and a coffee, we very quickly realized there were a lot of synergies, so it's going to be fun to kind of unpack those today. But to get things to get the ball rolling, I'd love to just start with um what was the initial starting point of this body of work, and I'll throw over to you first.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Me. Um so a collector came to my house actually, and there is a painting in my stairwell, which is of an old Armenian cross, and it's buried under a layer of wax, and um, this kind of mark making, and it's from a body of work actually almost maybe 25 years ago. It's well, it's the last remaining piece of a huge body of work that I made while I was living in Canberra. Um, and that was the piece that was actually the most delicate. Anyway, this person has a connection to, she's Greek, and we have quite a close connection, and she wanted one, and I said to her, Oh, yeah, that's a hard job. But basically, in order to make her commission, I had to reacquaint myself with the process of working with the wax in the way that I do. Um, and those crosses were sitting originally in paintings that had ovals like this. Um, so the form of the oval I've used on and off for about 30 years. Even pre-graduation, it's been around, and it's a locket for my grandmother. So that's the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Can you share? I mean, that's such a beautiful object, and you spoke so well about it when we um chatted, and it's such a special thing, and it's it's got a lot of connotations and connections for you. Can you talk a little bit more about that locket?

SPEAKER_00 3:54

So that's okay. So the locket was given to me by my Armenian grandmother, and when I opened it, it had no images in it. So it is without a photograph of anybody, it's not representing anyone. Um and I remember thinking as a child, because she gave it to me when I was about 16, and I still have it. Actually, I was going to bring it and I've forgotten, left it at home, but um, I was always kind of perturbed that this precious gift was given to me and there was no photograph. So the oval um is also kind of a representation of old-fashioned photographs where you had the vignette of the oval and a photograph was put in there. Um, and so I began working with it. And what else did I tell you?

SPEAKER_01 4:38

I think that's a beautiful, that's definitely where the work starts.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Um and then I guess for me the impetus of this body work was a commission from Manley Regional, uh, Manley Museum and Art Gallery, who approached me a year and a half ago and said, we have uh a hole for Mardi Gras and we'd love you to fill it, and we'd love you to fill it with a local story. And so I undertook the process of researching queer histories and queer stories from the northern beaches, uh, which, as you would expect, was actually not a rich tapestry of material to work with. I had to work quite hard to find stories and particularly work hard to find stories that weren't about men being thrown off cliffs, uh discrimination, uh, oppression, you know, all the stuff you would absolutely expect. Uh so instead of working with a historical story, I took the opportunity to work with a current living resident of the Northern Beaches whose experiences are not what we would typically expect of an LGBTIQ person in Manly and the Northern Beaches because their story, while still having been affected by the horrible atrocities that have been faced by the queer community, his story is actually really lovely. Um so the these drawings are were are the remnants or the aftermath of an animation I created for Manly, and it's about a man named Adam George. Adam, for anyone, Adam George was a star on a web series called the Horizon Series, and the Horizon series was out in the early 2000s, and for me as a young man when I was arriving in Sydney, it was a real um it, you know, it was shot on Oxford Street. It was a real guiding light being like showing contemporary gay life now in a very home and away kind of way. Um and he was an actor on it. He also is a surfer, he's a man in a documentary called Out in the Surf, Out in the Lineup, and he's also a boxer. So he's a very untypical, not a stereotypical homosexual. His relationship with masculinity is really interesting. And at the time that I found Adam and was interviewing him trying to find an interesting story, he was also just about to get married. Uh so this piece is about love, it's about his love of boxing, his love of his dog, and his love of his partner. And it's uh I just wanted to kind of so often my work is about big moments of progress or oppression or overcoming adversity, but it was nice to take a moment to uh document something as simple as love, and that's where the show's title even comes from. So it's so wind me up and off I go. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Um no, but one of the things that we um one of the points at which we connect, I think, and which is really interesting for people who are working with hidden histories, is to kind of make A, the connection, and B to somehow bring that into a visual domain. Because I think both of us are working with things that are unseen or put aside or renamed or yeah. Can you speak of it on the other?

SPEAKER_01 7:48

I would love to, thank you. Um, so much of my work is about finding hidden histories, queer histories that have been overlooked, oppressed, not properly recorded. Um, and while this series is a little bit different because it's actually saying, no, no, this moment is worthy of archiving, so much of my work is an interrogation of the archive. It thinks about why these stories were kept, why stories weren't kept. Um, another of my uh bodies of work is about Captain Moonlight, who is a notable Australian bush ranger, but only relatively recently have we come to really understand him and the fact that he was apprehended or captured while hugging his young male lover. Like that has been left out of the history books for so long. Why have we left that out of the history books? Why are we uncomfortable with this? Um, so the idea of what's hidden, what's visible, what we have to excavate, what we have to draw back in, what we have to punctuate, and what has been omitted is is very much a live theme in my work. But similarly, I mean, can we talk a little bit more about the histories that are informing the Lockett and your broader work?

SPEAKER_00 8:56

So um I was gonna leave them for a little bit later, but I'll just briefly touch on it. Um both my grandparents from my mother's side and my father's side. My father is a Greek, but his family are from the Ottoman Empire, with Greeks from the East, and my Armenian family obviously were from the Ottoman Empire, and um my work in general, not only this body of work, but all my work, I'm constantly searching for imagery that has been removed. And I'm very, very curious about this. I know that there are other artists, like there's a Dutch artist, um Deval, and he's a ceramicist, has a um Jewish heritage, obviously dealing with uh genocide, but there are, I guess, groups of artists or people who are mining archives and trying to mine imagery that has been almost destroyed. So, um, and the reason why I'm doing that is to kind of um move against, particularly for the Armenians, the issue of denial, the issue of political denial that an event happened, that this event happened. Um and so that's probably it. So, in terms of hidden histories.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Um, you're um using materials to hide things as well, which might be a nice segue into talking about the materials behind these processes. Yeah, yeah. Um, one of the things we spoke about so much was your choices and processes and the meaning behind the materials you choose.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

So um I have a very complex um relationship with materials. In general, I use I use materials that obviously speak to me. That's for all artists. Um and I'm in these particular works, I'm using a combination of acrylic paint, and the reason why I'm using acrylic paint is that it's the closest to egg tempera. So the Eastern traditions, both Armenian and Greek, and traveling east is egg tempera, but I can't use egg tempera at this scale and the way in which I'm using it. It's impossible.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Does everyone understand why egg tempera would be difficult at that scale? Does everyone know what egg tempera is?

SPEAKER_00 11:12

So you you use pigment with egg white and you get and of course with egg tempera you get a beautiful gloss from the from the album from the egg. Um, but it would be impossible to do it at this scale. Um, I'm not using oil constantly. I do work with oil paint, but it's not really my tradition. And then if I had to do it in oil, I'd probably kill myself with the toxicity process. It's hard enough with the acrylic or the um synthetic polymer, it's still fairly smelly in my studio, but yeah. And so once, for example, with this work, there is then a layer of wax that I'm using, and I'm using wax for a few reasons. One, it is fragile, memory is fragile, my history is fragile, I guess it ties in. Um then on top of that, there is the oil paint, which is a kind of conversation with Western art history. And technically, oil paint will stick on wax. So if I went on top with acrylic, it just wouldn't work. I guess the other thing I should say about the acrylic and the way in which I work with the material is that um I grew up dyeing fabric, dyeing wool, dyeing threads with my Armenian grandmother, um, and it's the closest. So water is very important, and it's important because I can use my full body with it. So um the paintings have a life between the floor and the wall in my studio, but it's a very physical process. Part of the process is extremely physical. So yeah, that's that's the materials I'm using. And then, yeah, your work too, you've got both acrylic or watercolour, and then charcoal or a wax crown on top, the white, a conte?

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Yeah, uh my work, I think the the material that is most resonant in my work is charcoal. And the thing about charcoal that I love and reflect about a lot with charcoal is it's essentially dead wood. It's it's a tree, it's a willow branch that's been saturated in flame and concentrated. I make a point not to use compressed charcoal or or unnatural materials I'm really interested in in dead wood, and even reduce my work down to being dead wood on dead wood. Um but the joy about charcoal is it's extremely malleable, it's very forgiving. Uh, you can change it as quickly as you change your mind, is a quote from the amazing William Kentridge, who Tanya and I were just discussing a little bit before the talk. Um, and that idea of memory and loss and mark making and inscription again sits with the queer histories I'm kind of interested in. You know, when I'm making a mark, it's in line with the process of writing history. When I'm rubbing that out or adjusting it, it's the same way we annotate history, or that some people or some histories have been removed. So there's a lovely metaphor there that I'm constantly reflecting on and also using to tell a story and build an image. So that's that's kind of the material driver, that metaphor that sits beneath the work.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

And that was for us a wonderful thing to connect with because both of us are working at a kind of level process-wise. I know you you are destroying the image that you make, you you move it, and when I'm working, I'm at that margin of complete and utter destruction at each level of the painting. So as I'm building it up, it doesn't matter. There is either complete and utter obliteration, which is necessary for my practice, or there's complete bliss. So there's this, you're at this kind of I'm that's a wonderful thing to connect with someone. I mean, I'm not doing representational work, but it's wonderful to have another artist who's working quite differently, but at that same margin, at that point, those where it connects.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

We're both dancing close to fire all the time. And they I mean, do you ever do you ever lose a work?

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Ha ha. Many. Yeah, like so often and Louise comes to the studio and she's like this painful thing.

SPEAKER_04 15:21

We all go, I'm destroying it, I'm cutting it up, and I'm like, please don't, please don't, just don't do it. And there are so many, and I think was it last year when it was so humid?

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Oh yes, humidity. Humidity is my enemy.

unknown 15:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Whereas in animating, there comes to a point where I might have done a hundred drawings on one page of a body moving in space or a dog running or whatever, and the paper actually can't take it anymore, and you actually can't repair it. Like the surface won't give any more. Either it breaks away and you're you're tearing through the wall, or it's just I have to either go, well, that's the scene, or I just did three days' work on that, but actually it hasn't resolved, so I can't use it in the animation. That happens a lot. Um or I try and paint over the top and restore it, but there's always it always feels like you're you're pulling it back from the brink. Yeah. Um and that tension, I mean, I love that tension. Uh it'll be very dull in the studio without it. Um, but sometimes I wish I did it something that wasn't so self-destructive.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Exactly. Well, I ask that question constantly: can I not find another way to paint? I mean, I've been doing this for a long time, and I do think that oh, there must be an easier way. Plus, my system is very toxic. So, you know, but there isn't because of the subject matter and the concepts and the themes behind it, there is no other way. You know, there's just that's the process, and I've got to I just have to go with it, I guess. That's the that's the thing.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

One of the parts of your process that really fascinates me, and you touched on it ever so briefly, is you talked about how it sits on the floor, and it in my head it's almost like a pool that you're dancing around, or there's something kind of spiritual or otherworldly in the way you're operating between wall and floor, wall and floor. It's almost like a bit of a ritual. Is that a fair summation of your process?

SPEAKER_00 17:18

I think I'm dancing with them.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Dancing, that's the word I'm after. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

So the floor relationship. So I'll just touch on scale. Yeah. Um, and we were talking about that. I'll we'll return to you and you'll and the cinemographic element in the work, which I love for drawing. Um, partly the scale of the work I've been using for 30, 40 years, really. Um, it's the size or the average size of a Armenian or Persian rug of rugs from the Middle East. I grew up living on a rug, sleeping on the rug, eating on the rug. So part of the process for me, I'm used to seeing a visual language horizontal, which is extremely important. Um, so the paintings start flat, they have to kind of start flat. Even cutting up the linen for the for the work, I'm I'm on it, and I have two grandmothers who are seamstresses, so um I'm used to seeing things flat, and of course, things flat on embroidery's flat on the table, so it's not unnatural that it should be vertical. And then when I'm actually making it, so I sieve pigment on water at some level of the at some part of the process. To sieve it, I have to pick up the canvas and rotate it with my body. So there's this whole thing that happens. I don't want to video myself because I just it's ridiculous to me, but there is that. And then at some point I they lie on the floor, they dry, they're whatever, and then they go onto the wall, and then they transform. Because my body is so involved in that scale, um, I now have a very physical relationship with the painting, with the form, with that. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

And I guess I haven't thought of it before, but the shapes and even the repetition of direction, all of that speaks to what we expect of a rug. There's like the formal qualities of a rug being translated and transferred into something other. Other, otherworldly, ethereal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Because I guess in my in the Armenian culture, the women are the collectors or the keepers of threads, and the men are the keepers of pigment. So we have tradition, so women, in most Eastern traditions, women are embroiderers, men are the painters. I live not in that world directly. I'm at the border again, I'm at that space. So I transgress between and I always wanted to paint.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

And was the rug also a bit of a meeting place for the family as well? Is there that layer to it as well? Yeah. There's so much going on here. Yeah, there's a lot.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Yeah. There's a lot, yeah, yeah. So onto yours.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

Can't I just deflect to you constantly?

SPEAKER_00 20:17

No. Um, what I love is so I'm I love photographs, but I hardly watch TV to a degree. But I love these because they have a cinemographic feel. Slightly elongated, more than a landscape. Can you talk to me about that?

SPEAKER_01 20:35

Or yes, there's a really practical side to the scale, um, and the scales actually sit in different ratios that connect to the videos that I make. So in this case, um, they sit at a 4-3 ratio and a 9x12 ratio, and they're literally the ratios of screens. So if I draw it, and this particular commission was uh a straightforward projection, so it's it's nine by sixteen, um, which is kind of your standard more, little bit more squashed rectangle. And if I draw on a larger standard piece of paper than what I set up, the composition, etc., something has to be cropped or changed to turn it into a video. So it's actually a really practical side of things, is um you know, knowing what I'm working towards rather than just drawing blindly and then building the composition to the format that I'm going to present in. So, for example, I just did a commission for Gosford and the ratio was 2 by 32, which is stupid. Yeah, thank you. Someone knows 2 by 32 is is um a very long panoramic format strip. And so to achieve that, it meant that I had to adjust every composition to a long, thin format. Um, and even drawing things to that format when you move it into the digital post production, there's always an element of cropping that happens and something always is lost. So I want to reduce that as much as possible. So the the like video nerd. Me sets things up to the right format, and that's that's how my scale's kind of determined. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

And then that that process of doing the drawing and then taking it up into a digital, I guess. Um there's a layer going on for me. I mean, a drawing is a drawing, and I can see it, but I'm very visual, so I can feel it with my eyes. When it goes onto that digital format, something transgresses.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

Do you do you feel that or do you don't mind? No, um, something's the the page has a power and the screen has a power, and they're very different powers, and the screen, even the difference between whether it's a monitor or a projection, have two very different energies to it. So any chance I can get to have my work projected rather than on a screen, I prefer the projection because a projection is light and light gives energy. A screen, on the other hand, takes energy, and that's why people get square eyes, and we talk about um we talk about screens as being a bad thing, whereas a projection is a ray of light, and there's something emulating and and um transformative or restorative in that.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

So what's really and again what's interesting to me to me because I don't work in any way near the anything digital, is that in the dig I've watched um Todd's movie three or four times, and it's got the the picture, the drawings are static, but in the digital format there's a beautiful rhythm, um, which I just fell in love with. I thought it was great because it kind of slowed me down. When you're looking at a uh a drawing, you're slowed down to look at that, but then that's kind of happening in another way. Are you conscious of the rhythm? Are you purposefully building that?

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Totally, totally. Um, thank you. Um so just in if you haven't encountered the video, what we're looking at here in the room are the last moments of sequences. So the rubbing out, the blurs, the things that are kind of ghostly there, there are lots of different stages of movement. So to generate um the moving image, I'm literally drawing one scene, taking a photo, rubbing it out, drawing the next scene. And then in post-production, I get to choose how they layer up together. So in doing so, I get to craft the rhythm. And one thing I like to think about is time is actually a tool. So, unlike many other mediums, I get to actually dictate how long you stand there and experience a moment. Like a painter gets to go, yeah, I really hope someone stands in front of my work for 30 seconds, but I get to go, this work is going to stay on the screen for 30 seconds, and whether you like it or not, it's there for 30 seconds. So I get to actively make choices about time. I can speed things up, I can slow it down, I can reverse. I can also do um crossfades and overlays and all sorts of digital things that allow me to play with the image in ways that my drawings I can't actually do. So the digital gives some offerings and lets me play with time and manipulate my audience's experience with the work in a different way.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

So this brings me to another question that we kind of bonded over, and that is to make the digital work and to make the drawings, there's an issue of multiples happening. There's multiple, uh the process of making a drawing, rubbing out, remaking is a process of multiples there. And I in this show particularly I've got I've put two images together as in a conversation. So do you want to talk about that process working singular, working in multiples?

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Yeah. I think one of the things that draws me and holds me in this process is that any page actually isn't a single page and isn't a single moment. A single page might have actually 30 drawings or 100 drawings or 160 drawings, however many I can get onto that page, they're all the remnants are there and they're all existing at once and they're all kind of in tension with one another or hinted or whispering through. So it's using that multiple, using that repetition to kind of suggest that the drawing is more than what you see. Which again alludes to these metaphors about history and the ideas that a, there's not one single historical narrative as much as we like to go to the museum and have our very neat version of this is how things happened. Actually, all moments of history, just like all moments of society, are lots of different narratives, lots of different experiences, all trying to coexist together at once and and fighting each other and jostling with one another and that fighting for attention and all of that stuff, and that's kind of captured in the work.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

And so when you're working, and I guess we we we recognize that we're doing the same thing, we're at the margin of total destruction and maybe something, and then that multiplicity and an awareness of the multiplicity. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Yeah, I've got a savour. It's yeah, you've got to really hold on to and then at the finishing moment where you're resolving the drawing, you decide what remnants, whether it was from five stills ago or forty stills ago, am I going to leave and really emulate, or which ones am I going to obliterate out and paint out and not give the audience like I get to choose what what narrative, what moments get to coexist on the final surface. Because you've got these two that are kind of coexisting and fighting. I mean, two's the obvious one here, but they're they're kind of oscillating, they're fighting, they're jousting, they're they're kind of vying for attention there.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

Yeah, there's um a double. There's a double. So um I've worked with the double for again a long time, and part of it has to do with a very romantic story, which I'll tell. Um, and the other part has to do um with seeing and time, and then I guess the other is a conversation again with art history. So these the romantic story is because my grandparents, my Armenian grandparents, basically were refugees about three times over, maybe four. I think my grandmother lived in 11 countries, I've lived in five. Um, and so my grandfather bought, I don't know where he found them, but he bought two twin Armenian rugs, identical, and he put them on either side of the bed of their bed in their bedroom. And he said to my grandmother, every morning we will get up on the same place, and at night we will come back to the same place because they had no homeland. So that was a space. So there were two. I have one of the rugs, and my uncle, who's just passed away actually in France, he has the other one. So it'll go to his family. One day I hope to bring both rugs together. I won't keep them.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

There's an exhibition in that.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

Yeah, there is an exhibition, the next one, actually. There's just another story, but they're not for now. And so there's that, there's the dual, there's his and hers. So when I'm painting these, in a way in my head, there's the masculine, there's my grandmother, and there's him. It comes in different forms every time in an exhibition. Um, one is the flow, which I think of as him, and the detailed one is her, so that's the the romance. Then, of course, uh in my PhD I wrote about the rotation of time and memory as two. And then I discovered in 2021 there was an exhibition in New York by Mal Bruchner, and I think it's John Mayer, who's the curator of that, and they wrote a book called The Double, and they talk about artists in history who have worked, one in particular, Matisse, but there's been many. Uh, Rauschenberg is another one. So it's not a new phenomenon, um, it's been around for a while. So I'm also having a kind of conversation with that and those artists from modern, you know, history, modern art history. And then, for example, in this work, these sort of came together. In fact, there is another black one in my studio, but I've waxed that one up. I didn't put it in this. Um, and this painting works perfectly fine on its own. If there's nothing wrong with it, but the minute I put it with this one, that was it. If I remove this one, I feel at loss. And so somehow there's a kind of conversation, and there's a conversation in terms of the black because I'm interested in ad Reinhardt, I'm interested in um Rembrandt's blacks. I've done a big study of that in my undergraduate, and how to build a black that's not really black, and so this key colour is within the work. Yeah, yeah. So there's there's another form of the double.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Um I feel like the theme we've circled around a lot today is memory. We've talked about it in so many different ways, but not actually dug into it as deep as we could or should. And one of the things I find so interesting is so many of your stories come back to these personal experiences that are really kind of rippling through and empowering the work. How important is memory to your practice?

SPEAKER_00 31:15

Um of course it's it's it's very important, but it's complicated because I didn't go through the genocide, although I've lived in so many countries because I've had to. Um my PhD was about post-memory. Uh, and it's interesting how memory, I guess there's the memory that your grandparents tell you, you learn it and you learn the stories, etc. etc. And then there is um an idea by Melo Ponty that memory is ingested into the body. And that for me is a very real thing. Um, because I'm working from found objects, I'm working from archives, you know. I'll I've been to the British Library to do research, I'm now wanting to go back to the VA to do some research for the next body of work. So there's that kind of historical memory, and then there's the memory that is within me, whether it's always, I don't know, passed down some way.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

Um so and then there's also the choice to remember and the choice to forget. Which when we're dealing with correct such atrocities as well, it's it's like what was chosen for me to understand of this history and what do I have to grapple with or find. So I'm kind of fair.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

Yeah, I'm kind of subversive.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:36

So I use it in a there's no point in me. I I'm not interested in that the work is political at one level because it drives me, but at another level, I'm very interested in the relationship of memory and beauty, and memory as a positive thing, as a regenerator. So that's kind of more where I'm I'm angling. I I'm kind of looking for a positive outlet. So, you know, which is what I think you're trying to do to some extent, is that while these are hidden histories, we have to find a way to bring them out that it kind of connects with the wider audience and it brings another life. Yeah, it's a re-encryption.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Memory can be something I dance with a lot is memory can be a guiding light or an anchor. And if I allow myself to sit too much in these horrible histories, then I'm engaging in trauma porn for a lack of a better phrase. Like it's how do we uh use these stories or remember them in a way that's useful for contemporary audiences? How do we find the light in them rather than just the atrocity? And how do we make them relevant and interesting and um didactic and also offering the right lessons to contemporary audiences through them? So it's important to choose what and how we remember and what and how we forget. And I feel like I'm constantly at a tension. There's like this very thin bandwidth between remembering and forgetting that is where the best artworks kind of happen.

SPEAKER_00 34:09

Yeah, and that's because when you're making it, when I'm making it, I'm in I'm in very deep memory. Yeah, and so one of the funny things about this show, for example, is the palette. Um, and it's funny because when Todd came to the studio, you were like, Oh, we're using almost an identical kind of palette, even though I have red. It's a very cool palette, it's not a warm palette, it's sitting at a very different level. And what I um so normally I'm quite conscious about colour, and I'm I'm using it for specific specific cultural reasons because I see colour both scientifically and I see it as a colour is culture. But somehow I made three paintings and I wasn't even really thinking, I just did them in like by breathing the colour, and then suddenly I was like, oh, oh my god, here's the colour. It's my you know, it's very Armenian. And then I think I found a video and I showed Luise. I was like, oh my god, look at this. Um so in this case, memory is working very subconsciously.

SPEAKER_03 35:09

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

That's that's you know, that's when I'm saying it's in the body, it just it's there, and it's you know, it's yeah. And so that it's not a it's not like it's not always like, oh, I'm going to remember, blah. I do something, and then five minutes later I'm like, oh, you're an idiot. Of course, you know, X, Y, Z. So that's that's that's it.

SPEAKER_01 35:31

We might, I feel like we've covered our questions and talked a lot. I'd love to hear if you have any questions for either of us.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

Really? Um you mentioned about the locker not having any phones. Did you have your grammar?

SPEAKER_00 35:47

There is a very sad story. Okay. Yeah, I don't really want to go there. But there is, there is, there, there is, there is. There are, um, yeah, there's a sad story to the locker, which um you know yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:16

Because it's really expensive.

unknown 37:39

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 37:39

Uh any last word. Um I just wanted to also ask for uh Have you designed any rugs?

SPEAKER_00 37:51

Have I designed any rugs?

SPEAKER_02 37:53

Well you were talking about how important rugs are. Is it time to do a horizontal work?

SPEAKER_00 38:01

Um. Uh and I have a very I'm right there. That was very clear. I think um, look, I was made to embroider and weave when I was a child, and I hate it. I I absolutely hate it. I don't know why. Everybody else does it, and they do it much better than I do, and I am like, I don't know, but I remember um everyone says I always wanted the paintbrush and the pigment. Full stop. I don't know. And I guess maybe because I was made to do it, um, because okay, I'm born in the 60s and grew up in the 70s, I had a very traditional family. I can totally relate what we had to do. But the other side is that um by the time I was 13, I was already studying Brogel as a painter. So I was obsessed with painting. My work is as much about my history as it is about the history of painting, you know. Um and I'm very definite about that. And uh I want to make a work, I mean, I'm using an abstract language, but I want to make a work that's as powerful as it can be because I'm having a conversation with very particular artists in art history as a woman. Um things have changed maybe a little bit, but there is a very different thing, very definite, you know, kind of and I'm I love paint. It's it and colour, it's just but um the minute I sit with a needle, I'm I'm useless.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

Would it be rude of me to suggest that you're embroidering in paint though?

SPEAKER_00 39:41

I am, and I know that, which is the funny thing, which is the thing I laugh about me because I I say to myself, oh, I'm doing this with a tiny brush, but it's because I love paint.

SPEAKER_02 39:54

Was that Roman's teacher? So half of what you did was sewing and co-created, and it was creative in boyfriend. Uh there was a funny moment in my eyes where he was telling me about all these things he had against when he was a teenager and stuff. And I was like, I rebel against sewing.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

I mean what is so sewing, sorry, uh more sew either is my point. I mean, it's it's expected that I was to be a sewer. And I actually started very young making silk screens and fabric designs with a shellac. And then I would make clothes because I was with my grandmother, so I would make my own clothing. So it was expected that I was going to do that.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

Um you've taken it to a much more beautiful place.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

Yeah, I just, you know, there are other people who do it much better than me. We'll stop.

SPEAKER_01 40:53

If there aren't any other last questions, we might say thank you there. Great. Thanks for and feel free to hang around and have a chat.