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LoveArt
The LoveArt podcast is hosted by leading contemporary art advisor Amanda Love, offering an informed perspective on the Australian and international contemporary art market
LoveArt
Love[f]Art #08 | Nell
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Hosted by Amanda Love, the LoveArt podcast brings listeners into direct conversation with contemporary artists, extending the work of the independent art advisory, LoveArt, based in Sydney, New York and Athens.
The series draws from Love[f]Art, LoveArt’s ongoing program of intimate, in-conversation recordings with artists, originally conceived in 2020. Filmed in the most unlikely of settings—the guest powder room at the Love residence—the project strips things back to a one-to-one exchange, focusing on ideas, process and the conditions that shape contemporary practice.
This episode features Nell - the mononymously titled artist - explores a poetic dichotomy of spiritual influences and good old-fashioned rock’n’roll across a variety of mediums including painting, ceramics, sculpture, video and performance.
Recorded in August 2022, at the time of the work’s installation, the conversation offers a direct insight into the thinking behind the piece, and the broader concerns that underpin her practice.
Izabela Pluta is represented by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney.
Additional information, including the video version of this podcast, is available here.
Hello and welcome to the eighth iteration of Love Art's nano project space, Love for Art, where we multitask this purpose-built isolation chamber, aka our nano guest bathroom, now almost returned to its proper use, as a kind of vote de Belize to counter the increasing size and complexity of much contemporary gallery and museum practice with explorations of a different scale. Here, on Gadigul Land, so I do pay respects to the Aodora Nation and all their elders, we investigate the tiny and the one-to-one to showcase and thankfully now exhibit the strength of current artistic expression, which is by necessity innovative and genius. I'm Amanda Love, and it's my great pleasure to introduce Love Art's latest installation, Everyday Happiness, comprised of four artworks by the artist mononymously titled Nell. Nell's work exudes what I can best describe as a poetic dichotomy of spiritual influences and good old-fashioned rock and roll, oscillating between such binary archetypes as life and death, happiness and sadness, and the Buddhist belief that everything is connected, all via motives of the egg, smiley faces, ghosts, and the rock band ACDC. It's a vernacular practice spanning installations, sculpture and painting, music, and also performance, which essentially connects with viewers through its exploration of an essential idea of what it is to be human, which of course is very much bound up in Nels Buddhist practice. Some selected recent group exhibitions include Know My Name, Australian Women Artist 1900 to Now at Canberra's National Gallery of Australia, Clay Dynasty and looking at painting at Sydney's Kazulu Powerhouse, Hyper Aware 21st Century Highlights from the Collection at the recently opened HOTA in Queensland, all of which for last year. And then there's the brilliant and widely travelled Just Not Australian, which initially opened at Artspace, Yay! Big shout out there in Sydney in 2019, and the national New Australian Art at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art in 2017, along with Magic Object for the Adelaide Biennale at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 2016. Mel's work is collected by such important institutions as the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Mona, MCA, UQ Art Museum, the Gallery of South Australia, Mayford Regional Art Gallery, and Art Bank Sydney. And you may have also seen the latest of a number of public commissions she's undertaken. It's called Tree House and Happy Rain at Carriage Works, about which we will talk later. So Vivian the Stone series of Nell. She turns shit into smiles and makes an egg out of death, and her clouds are sunny. On which Nell, welcome. It's lovely to see you while sitting here amidst this tiny but fully formed survey show of your work. It seems eons ago that we were on the dance floor in Shanghai in a Shanghai nightclub when you were, I think, undertaking a residency in Beijing, I forget the year now.
SPEAKER_01Hi, um, I'm currently in my powerhouse studio on Dadigaland. Um and yes, I remember that night in Shanghai very well.
SPEAKER_00Um, how's it going? It's nice to see you in your studio, which actually looks quite full. But later on, before we finish, I'll get you to take us around and do it. But um I thought we'd we'd delve straight into your practice um because it and sort of I suppose your life, because it's clear that your Buddhist practice is deeply embedded in both your work and your work layer of life, as is rock and roll, in the sense that um being present, habituating gratitude, and counting blessings, for instance, are all strongly tempered within your practice with a hard rock pick, and all of which is pretty well laid out. I I think in your 2012 installation at Mona in Tasmania, which was um provocatively titled Let There Be Robe. And I know it went on to have an extremely diverse exhibition history, and it is now permanently on view at HOTA in the Gold Coast for those who want to go and see it in the flesh. But I thought if you could take us through this first iteration um just now in in terms of your practice and your process and the fundamentals behind it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, sure thing. Um so yeah, as you said, it's um this artwork's almost been like a band on tour itself. I'd love to make a t-shirt of all its venues. I worked out it's been um seen for a year in total, if you add the seven or eight venues that were it's shown together. So it certainly had um a lovely audience like a band would. Um so it's a real mishmash of those things that you just flagged. Um my growing up, you know, the uh certainly music and Christianity were in and religion were integral to my very uh to my you know genesis, for want of a better adjective, understanding of an aesthetic life. And um, so this work combines lots of those things. The t-shirts are all hand-sewn onto a Buddhist robe. The you can see the badges around the neck are pinned on. Um, there's ACDC badges, the beads around the neck are Tibetan prayer beads. The shoes the mannequin is wearing are actually my Converse All-Stars, the very first um pair of shoes I ever, like cool shoes I ever had. I bought them when I was 14. And so, and I yeah, I kept them because they were sort of like uh symbolic of a magical escape from Maitland and of a bigger world. And so, and then all the crosses around the perimeter of the walls, festooned the walls, a festooned with crosses, all those crosses are made from handmade from paintbrushes and drumsticks and nail files and screwdrivers and pairs of scissors. And I made them over a long period of time, there's 500 of them. And so the idea was you'd walk into the space and you couldn't quite work out like if there was some kind of ritual going on or that was um a chapel, sort of a secular rock and roll spiritual chapel. And as you can see there in front of the mannequin, there's these uh guitar picks, and each of the guitar picks has my name on it uh in the ACDC font. Fortunately, my birth name Nell has four letters, which corresponds beautifully with ACDC having four letters. And they those pile of picks were sort of like the the wafers that are given out in Christian um uh what do you call them? Like Christian uh you go for and then all also like the piles of rice that are offerings on altars in Buddhists. So it's a real mishmash of all those things. And it's certainly my relationship to rock and roll, Christianity, Buddhism, Western art history that, you know, also experiencing all of that from growing up in Maitland and an Antipodean perspective that led to this work.
SPEAKER_00Michael. And what does that interest all the badges and all were they all yours, or did you collect other ones? I mean, is that really, you know, like a childhood or childhood moving into adulthood room that you put into that, or did you have so yeah, you've hit on another sort of vein there, which is that the kind of worship I had for these objects and that they were my own personal spiritual relics.
SPEAKER_01So some of them, the t-shirts were mine, but then like this project uh started to evolve and the badges were mine, but then I bought more badges and patches to flesh out the worm.
SPEAKER_00And was it kind of patharic to put all that stuff out there and then in that kind of comparative way, even or mishmatched, you know, meshed way?
SPEAKER_01Um, yeah. Oh, it's it like I said, it's had a lovely response. Um, all the crosses have little um embellishments, so it might be like a plastic blow fly and or old lightning bolt earring, or you know, uh another guitar pick or the end of something of a um, you know, the end of a dart, you know, when darts are played in the pub, or even um pipe cleaners. So it seems to be evocative and resonate with people. And the cross is too there's a sense of accrual. You can't just make all that on one day or get it produced. Like it's sort of a bit like when you walk in, it's a bit nutty that someone would go to the effort to make all that. And I wanted very much wanted that feeling.
SPEAKER_00And and slight bit of obsession there as well. Yeah, for sure. That's that's in the healthy in the DNA. I remember talking about blowfly. I think the very first work or part uh collab was I saw was a collaboration at Fat Space or Gita Vice's gallery, I forget where it was with Melanel, and it was blowflies, all black blowflies. Was that yeah, dripping from the walls? Same memory?
SPEAKER_01No, no, but you're having a good uh correct flashback. There was um it was actually at Rune 35, which was Gita Vice's project space, and it was show uh where all the uh ceiling looked like it was bleeding droops of flies. And then I had a a big blow fly at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Like that was the singular one almost pulled out from those masses. And I remember you did see that because I remember we talked about that. So that must have been about 2001 or the show at Art Gallery. So yeah, and that show at Gita's was earlier than that.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm glad you had a little fly left for this exhibition.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Just to keep it all going.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00So um another um I I I feel very much when I look at sort of moving on to not so much this exhibition, but if we move on to the exhibition that was in the um thing was your contribution to Adelaide Biennale, I think you called it the wake. I a starting point for that for me for me is really an idea of sort of anthropomorphism. Yeah. Um there's you know, it seems like do you is that is that fair enough? Is it do you do you see or at least strike or do you strive to see, or do you just naturally faces in most things, or only selected objects?
SPEAKER_01No, ever since I was a kid, I've really thought everything had a spirit, and I used to see the oranges growing on the tree and you know, think all of them had faces. But so the anthropomorphism comes from, I mean, you you can feel it even looking at these this image, even on a screen, because everything has an eye, like apertures for eyes, then aperture for a mouse. It has a front and a back because the eyes are at the front of the body and the back has no eyes, and then the legs of the stools operate a little bit like human legs. But you know, there's a bit of a missing torso in arms, but yes, they are anthropomorphic for sure.
SPEAKER_00Well, they kind of work like babies, don't they? Because they've got the pronounced um uh attributes that demand attention and kind of put out a psychological regipster to an essentially inanimate or um unformed object.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. And I've spoken about this at length, and you're you're definitely um pointing to it that uh there's 41 works in this in this series called The Wake, and I was 41 when I made it, and I made it sort of as a um not as an artwork actually, which is often when you make your best artwork, but it was just a very healing exercise because I lost a baby, and um I made these spirit creatures which express the spectrum of joy and sorrow. Um and they were little animated characters that are about the size that I could hold in my arms. Yeah, and interestingly, that um metaphor, they're vessels, right? Ceramics are vessels, most of them are ceramic. There are a few bronze, there's the hand stitch, there's a few concrete works, I think, too. And a book, um, yeah, a few different materials, but for the most part, they're ceramic. And and they do riff on vessels, but there's holes in them. They're they're useless as vessels. They can't hold anything, and I couldn't hold the baby either. So there's a lot going on there, and yet some of them are purely spirited and joyful, and some of them are really screaming the pain of the world, and they're all there at the wake.
SPEAKER_00So, um, so they so I was going to ask you that I can they do indeed, you know, refer to you know, frailty and mortality.
SPEAKER_01And then interestingly, when you're standing in the room and looking at them all, you could be the subject of the wake. So you're alive, but somehow they're all like a family together looking at you as the viewer.
SPEAKER_00So this is interesting about this exhibition because I don't ask you this later in terms of your process, because you actually made these works for this exhibition at that time. As often you put works together and create an exhibition, which we we can talk about later, but this was made all these works you made because of the time you were in and specifically um related to that exhibition, that time and how you were feeling.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, for sure. No, I as I said, I didn't actually start making them to make art. I just made them because I needed to make them. And then, but then it does, of course, I'm an artist, so it has bearings on words I've made before and words I'll make in the future. And I had made another work, I don't think we've got an image of it here today, uh, but you would know it, Amanda, and other people will know it. It's a bronze woman, and there were 33 ghosts walking behind her, glass ghosts. And so, you know, I had made that work as a marker of being 31, and then I've made this work as a marker of being 41. So it does relate, you know, even numerically to other things.
SPEAKER_00So we'll we can expect 51 in a few years.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's yeah. No, not yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, um, I think if we move to to the national, your exhibition, the national, and for those who don't know, the national is a collaboration between the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Carriage Words. And it's proved to be one of Australia's most prestigious exhibitions. And it was inaugurated in 2017, and now you exhibited in that inaugural exhibition uh with a mix of existing and new works titled with things being as they are. So I thought maybe you could walk us through this exhibition and discuss that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So this was just a year on from that previous work called The Wake. And this work, while while The Wake was more explicitly about losing lucky, my baby, this work was about absence and about the loss of not being able to try again. So it's a very quiet work. Um, it's quiet both in its display, particularly. There's a lot of uh negative space. You can see on the tatami mats, there's uh negative space in the painting. It's a very restrained palette between black, white, and the in-between is that warm tatami or the gold. And so it's sort of like life, death, and what's in between. And that's why it was called with things being as they are, which was uh actually a quote from a Triffid song, an Australian band, but also it was about accepting with things being as they are. You can see a little blowfly on the corner of the tatami and that there, just where the cursor was a second ago. Yes, so these these symbols have uh and objects are still still landing in my work. And the painting was called Mother of the Dry Tree, and um the painting on the wall, and uh it's a it's really quite large, but it's a version of a very small painting that's in the Renee Sofia in Spain called The Virgin of the Dry Tree, and where the virgin is holding her baby. But in my painting, sort of the the larger figure and the smaller figure are parted, and those are those A's are A C D C A's. Some of them are uh in hand embellished and some of them are cut from t-shirts. And in the original painting, the A's were sort of in this big crown of thorns, which is probably A for Ave Maria, and my A's are obviously A C D C A. So yeah, I really feel like the this body of work had um, I feel like uh formally it's quite mature, which is a nice thing to be able to say.
SPEAKER_00Sweet. I was going to because my feeling when I look at this, you know, in the context of the development of your practice, yeah, you know, the word plasma, you know, really comes to mind. And I really get from this exhibition that you're really working um with the relationship of things to each other as much as the relationship to the viewer. Um I mean, did that I feel that that's really become a primary impulse, and I see it clearly in this speech. Is that reasonable?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I think the tatami mats were a way of having like one set of little relationships on this island, and then you can see these sticks, and then they relate to the walking stick in the background, and there's kind of a lot of ricochets that go around the room of all the different elements, and the more time you spend with it, the more you see it. So, yeah, that's that's definitely, definitely the case. And this work is this body of work has been touring in a show called uh One Foot on the Ground, One Foot on the Water, which has come from La Trobe and it's touring all around Australia. And many of these uh works from this installation are touring in that show, and it's a beautiful show should anyone get to see it. And I presume you've completely reconfigured the show for that new barbecue, or you've actually kept this. It's mostly there, it's about 80% of that. So it's the painting. I think there's yeah, and one set of tatami mats with all the the one that you can see in the foreground and the back the one in the background is slightly abbreviated, but for the most part it's there, and then the the baby in it and the mother in the nest are there, and yeah, most of it's there.
SPEAKER_00In in the Turi shop. You've got the Buddhist references being the tatami madam and the Ave Maria, which is the Christian reference.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah, I hadn't even thought about it, but yes, it's all there, and then it's very much Western art history though, too, because if you know about the art that I love, and you will know it in Mandarin, is all those um Mike Kelly works of the um the stuffed animals on the on on picnic rugs talking to each other and how evocative they were, and how uh like that sense of triggering and nostalgia that they were in their own world talking to each other, and you you were what were observing. So there's lots of all of that, the art history as well.
SPEAKER_00I I was actually going to ask you, and as you mentioned, the Mike Kelly and the characters, I was going to ask you, um, do you do you ever create backstories? Because you know, there's a huge, as we talked about, the anthropomorphic nature. Do you ever create backstories or stories for your characters? You write it, you know, would you write a have you written stories about them and their their life, their inner life?
SPEAKER_01That's a that's a really interesting question. Not so much backstories, but the all the works in the wake had individual titles. And as I was making them, sometimes they felt very gendered. Like there was one that was an upside down strawberry, and that was definitely a little girl. Like, I don't know why or how. And then otherwise other ones like, you know, little man, and yeah, but so they definitely uh evolved through in the making of them. Yeah. But backstory is not so much, not so much, but the story comes as I'm losing with them. Sometimes people tell me things about them that they've made up or that that in their response that sort of then add into my story of them. Yeah. It's sort of like a little like icing on a cake that I've already baked. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, also the idea here of um, you know. Mixing old works and and new works to you feel that so you know do obviously do you come with the title first?
SPEAKER_01No I will come first or the no the old work and the new work is something that's um I think part of having a studio practice and I've spoken about this before. It's like having a yeast, which is a mother, like it starts the next bit of the bread, like you've got that uh bit of energy or material from and it just triggers the rest. I mean, I've heard of writers who say that you know, at the end of the day, they don't write until they know where they're going to stop, but they they they leave off where they know they can come back in the morning and and they know what they're gonna do, so they don't have to start from scratch again. So it's a little bit like that. If I've got something, then it kind of like it's the yeast to kickstart the whole thing and it just or the key to the door, and I'm away. And I don't have to start from scratch, and it's helpful for me in a studio practice.
SPEAKER_00So you know what now, and I suppose that's a that's mature practice. You know what it is, you know how you work and what it is you're working with. And then when the opportunity comes, you can see what you're going to how you're going to work with it.
SPEAKER_01Is that yeah? Yeah, it's kind of like a yeah, it's kind of like a studio trick, right? It's a strategy to like lose the fear, or or you know something's gonna work, or or you might have something left over from another body of work which didn't quite fit, but you know, now's the time to shine, so to speak. But there's there's lots of permutations of that, but it's yeah, a way of just yeah, I all I can say it's a bit of a studio strategy. Studio practice.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And then um, then of course there's Japan. Um, we used which I mean, mate. Will you speak a bit about, you know, when did that love affair begin?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so Japan was the very first place I ever went overseas. I went when I was 16 on a school exchange just for a couple of weeks, but it was just profoundly um different to anything I'd ever experienced, and I absolutely loved it. Um, and so one other element of this work is you can smell that reedy smell of the tatami map. And um, the Buddhism that I gravitated to was Zen through Lindy, Lindy Lee, a worked very well known artist, which um is a Japanese uh expression of Chinese Chang Buddhism. And um I think I'm probably a bit of a jappophile, you know. I just love the um aesthetics. I love the food.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Uh now the the your aesthetics aren't minimal, so it's it's this is more like the this the old-fashioned aesthetics, the kimono type aesthetics.
SPEAKER_01Well that that kim the work we looked at. See, there's so many things that are just interchangeable and everything. Yeah, so in Japan, one of the things people did when they were really poor is they sewed paper onto their kimono so that they could have, and then when the paper fell off, they'd put another kind of paper on because they could only afford patent paper, that is, so they could because they couldn't afford multiple kimonos. So that's actually where I got the idea to do that patchwork um ACDC t-shirt robe was from doing the seeing. I actually saw one in in the NGV, um, the bat a paper robe. So yeah, that that Japanese kind of um wabisabi can do like Arte Brevera, but an Asian version. I love that, that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_00So I love I love the idea of Japan and I love the the minimalist aesthetic, but I often find going there quite challenging because it's so alien somehow. You know, to it to West um uh and just when you mentioned charm in terms of Buddhism, Chinese charm, did you say Chinese charm? Is that sort of like Taoism in a way?
SPEAKER_01Or no, it's it's Buddhism that came from India and became Chan, which Buddhism, wherever it goes, marries a bit with um whatever's there. So yes, probably Taoism did feed into Chan, but Taoism is in itself something different. And as far as my understanding is I'm not an expert, so yeah.
SPEAKER_00I think if I'm meant to be any kind of Buddhist, I'd be a Taoist. Um cool. Yeah, you know. Anyway, so moving on. Um, and if we move on to um another element of your work, which I've you become which is quite predominant, which is text, of course. And I was just saying text is actually words, and most specifically certain words play a huge role in in your work. And I'm thinking particularly about the exhibition Words and Crosses that you showed is 2017 at the Wei Kitako Institute of Technology in Hamilton in New Zealand.
SPEAKER_01Yep. So yeah, this show was um, yeah, as you said, I think it's called Waikato in Hamilton, or the the Tron, as the locals call it. Um and this work, Words and Crosses, was roofing on uh a Colin McCann work that they have in their local museum. And um his painting was sort of a sandwich board of describing objects and subject, and so it's debatable whether it's actually an artwork or he was making it sort of as an instructional sandwich board. So that's what my show was about, um, riffing on that. And then it's interesting looking at this on the screen and then the painting behind you, because you know, there's a definite and and the painting behind me. There's definitely a relationship between all three there. And um the Waikato Museum um now own this, so and they've hung it next to that Colin McCall work. So this was in the window of the University Museum, and you could see it um yeah, from the street.
SPEAKER_00So it sort of looks like must be so thrilling to have that work where I mean I scare your obsession with Colin McCahms. Yeah, and I can see exactly why you find him so intrinsically interesting.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, um also had the let there be robe in another room, and then the slide that was just up, yeah, that you can see the text in the background there is all a um a mashup. The wallpaper is a mashup of many, many um paintings of um text paintings that I've done in the past. And like the faces, one of the reasons I use text is because with a face, you can't unread a smile, you can't unread a tear. Everyone knows what it means, doesn't matter how old you are. And obviously these are in English, but you can't unread words either. And so I had read that Colin McCann said he wasn't really connecting with his audiences. Oh, there we have a fly again, connecting with his audiences or his viewers through his symbolic use, especially symbolic through symbols. And so he decided to use words so he could he could say what he meant. And it was such a revelation for me. I was like, wow, I love the shape of um words, the the font, the scale, they the colours, these all things have meaning in and of themselves. And so that's part of the reason I embraced um text in my work.
SPEAKER_00And just in terms of you making the work and writing the text in when I'm sitting here looking at the work behind me and work behind you, um, I mean, there is the element of the brush and that idea of forming. I mean, do you try and form each letter with one brushstroke, or do you have a, you know, is that relevant to your painting the words?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um, that's really interesting. Like some of the words, um, I want to paint them in a font and it's really, really particular and very precise. And other times you want the feeling of the brushstroke and the feeling of the word to come through. And so that's got more emotive character that's like the words behind you. So sometimes it is on brushstroke. I also I've learned a lot of tricks from Carl McCann. He um you start the brush brushstroke sometimes off the page and then off the page, off the canvas, and then enter it on. So you're not starting the energy field. Yeah, and so he's the start that's like moving, and you can do it on the wall first, then you go across. There's not necessarily any examples here, but in terms of that energy of the brushstroke, it is a it's a thing. And there's the whole calligraphy, the whole yellow graphic reference of what which goes back to the Asian and the the Zen and monks and yeah, doing calligraphy.
SPEAKER_00And then talking about you know, MASH, then of course there's rock music and ACDC in particular. I know that you've spoken about rock and roll's potential for transcenders, but is that where is that how it comes, is that how it's always been for you, or is that how it comes together now you see it like that?
SPEAKER_01I think um once I started going to concerts, I guess it reminded me of what people experienced going to church. I grew up going to a Baptist church and um in it, I guess, and and other Pentecostal churches. So in and the Pentecostal church is responsible for Jerry Lulu and Elvis Bradley and Big Mama Thornton, and like the Pentecostal church is that call and response of music is a huge influence into what rock and roll became.
SPEAKER_00So um and I suppose that's how rock and roll or music is used in the Pentecostal church and all spiritual tradition of the reviving church is spiritual, yeah. Yeah, chanting and because I thought you know yeah, um on that sort of talking about well, transcendence, whatever, you have been quoted as saying that and freedom is always near and that's as as good as it gets. Um is that is that what is that what art you think is that Buddhism or is that how you feel, or is it possible or just always near?
SPEAKER_01It's always possible. If you if you're if you can be in the present moment, yeah, that's what I meant by freedom is always near. Donnie meant it's always nearby, not always just out of reach. That's right. It's always available and that uh understanding and is very much in the works that are in the room that are is installed in your powder room. So we can talk maybe more about that when we look at those works.
SPEAKER_00Well, um we can we can even talk about look I was going to just mention your I was gonna mention your um your uh commissions at uh Everly Street at at the railway yards, you know, the um Everly Treehouse, which the is a sense of with a series of tree-dropped shaped houses sitting on top of stilts, sort of much like grown-up versions of the wake. Um and it's poetically titled Everly Treehouse, and um it's a kind of magical structure, but would you say there's also some somewhat potentious nature to it?
SPEAKER_01Well, that depends on you know how you're feeling. Not really, maybe they look more dramatic at night than they do. Um, yeah, no, they've they're pretty, they're very much like those works in the wake, that they are spirit creatures on legs. And I wanted to marry the you know, industrial uh architecture of carriage works. It's the same facade as carriage works and everly works, where the windows became those uh heavy lided eyes and the arch doorway became the mouth. And then marry it with the nature, which was these gum trees where the tree houses were. So I wanted to look like the facade of one of the individual bays, had gotten up, walked over and made love with the trees, and these were their love children. So yeah, I would get up actually and go inside them. Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's only the beautiful from inside. Yep. And you know, I've walked past and seen people having conversations, office office meetings, meditating, and it's also an alternative walkway. So you can walk along um at an elevated way and then walk down the stairs as an alternative walking route um without having to enter either of the pods. So just as sort of a like a uh, you know, raised walkway. So you can sort of experience it high up. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Beautiful, beautiful. And you, I mean, you had to engage, it was quite a community-based project, wasn't it, in terms of the making of it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So in total, there was um over 400 volunteers, 440, I think, who came to workshops at Everly Works, which is the almost continuing Victorian blacksmith in the world. And it was just a wonderful, wonderful experience to have, you know, something that was made by the community that now lives in the community in the same place that was made. And there's another layer of beautiful connection here, and that is that my great-grandfather worked um at Iverly as a boilermaker in Bay Four, and we made this in Bay One, and he worked there during the depression, one week on, one week off, to um, you know, job sharing. So, in a very real sense, like that that employment funded my family's survival through well, not that I was born yet, through the depression, but so yeah, it has a beautiful family connection. And the people who came to the workshops were from all um you know parts of life and all different ages, and we were all there for a common purpose. And yeah, it's definitely one of the best things I've ever been involved in.
SPEAKER_00Um, it it looks, it looks, it looks fantastic. It seems like it. I mean, it was a huge enterprise. How long did it take you? I mean, even how did you even marshal? How did you even organize all those?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it took a lot of organization, but in terms of public art, it was incredibly quick. Um, we started the first public workshops we started in the November and we installed in the July. So we worked really, really hard, and there's thousands and thousands of those individually forged gum leads. So that's only uh yeah, seven months, which is you're not not not long actually.
SPEAKER_00And then um, of course, there's also Happy Rain, which is again was again commissioned by a Movak at Carriage of Works. And here you've introduced Neon. And from what I looking at it now and what I understand of what's gone on in the last four months, well, luckily I've been traveling, but it's almost like you've literally encountered the recent weather here. But I presume when you made it, it was after during the fires and the droughts around 90. It was actually before that, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So it just shows you that you know the weather is a thing in our life. Um, yeah, so this is very close to the tree houses, and just back to the tree houses, I do need to mention that I made it in collaboration with Everly Works, the workshop and Taburb and an architecture firm in Sydney. And this is this is also on a Sissons building. And um, so it's actually LED, and during the day it's more like a line drawing, and at night it's backlit. Um, yeah, so I just wanted to make this as a community building, and I wanted to make sort of something very welcoming and something very universal. And as you just said, yeah, that when we have bad weather, often we feel bad. And so this was again like a certain work in your powder room right now, something that might usually be associated with something negative here is very happy. And um, yeah, it definitely has different meanings at different times because certainly during the bushfires, uh uh, you know, people were texting me when they're in the park and the park was very dry and saying, I wish we had some of this right now. And then when we have too much rain, it feels a bit awkward and weird to have all these extra drips on the wind on the uh exact building.
SPEAKER_00But then um, you know, it does really demonstrate your inversion of or your use of opposites in that way you have the smiley face inside what's usually, you know, a cloud, um, which is seen as a sad or negative thing. And you you've you've sort of transposed those. Um nothing very simple. Oh, please go on. Um yeah, no, I was gonna say, should we should we get get on to the what's on the the the the what I feel I feel like I'm sitting here in a kind of terrarium of your practice. And um I love the title, Everyday Happiness. And I I do presume you came up with this title first as direct response to the location, or or is it just another thing you fluffed and saw that it worked perfectly?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so everyday happiness isn't actually the title of the little uh turd, the first turd that I made, the silver-plated turd. Well, let's get keep going. Yeah, and so everyday happiness, the title of that work came from the same kind of thing that um usually we associate going to the toilet with like non-time or um not you don't really think about being happy because you're doing a poo, right? But if you are doing a poo, then that means that you've got enough to eat and that you're not constipated, and there's something to be grateful for. Satisfy. Yeah, and it's satisfying you feel good afterwards. So that work's called everyday happiness, and it was also, and then that became the um titular for the whole suite of works. And then it's so fascinating for me, and this is what was great about doing this little um show, is that how I've made this painting, which actually comes from the same intention as the Pooh, even though they look so vastly different, because the title of the work of the painting, what's it called? It's called Um Above the Ground and Under the Sky. Happy Days are seven days a week today. And it's about today, it's about right now, it's about what we just spoke about before. That um uh what were we saying when you said you quoted me saying that freedom is near? And yeah, freedom is near. And so that thing that today is all there is, like this is it, like you and I talking now. That's that's that's it. And then the lightning bolt operates it again, it's so it's a different material, but it's the same thing. It's like this lightning bolt of a moment that it comes like this and it goes like this, and this is what things can change like this, and just so quickly. So that they all have such a relationship to being present and to that freedom being near. And then I couldn't help but think about the lightning bolt moment sometimes one has when one's on the toilet. Yeah, well, absolutely. Yeah, even the other day, I was in a meeting here at the studio, and then we're having quite a robust discussion, good, productive, and then I went to, I said, look, I've just got to go pee. Then I went to the toilet, and then my thoughts slowed down, and then I came back and was able to, you know, move forward with the conversation differently. So going to the toilet's a beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_00Well, there's also that thing of making room for a thought, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, exactly. And and and maybe too, the the toilet is a private space, so like you you can think differently. Yeah, yeah. And then the ghost in context of this room, well, I just figure every room needs a ghost. And um, this ghost is part of a new series um called they're called Sunset Ghosts. And there were some ones I made last year, which were called Sunshine, which were yellow.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so that's the in it in it, yeah. You've said it, these ghosts that um you said that you know they chain us to the the recesses of past experiences, and um, I think it's like the fantasy of future events, and they'll never fade until we're able to understand them. I mean, so these see these ghosts as some kind of like ethereal necessity, like a meditative meditational force meshing the rational, rationale of our existence, not rational, the rationale of our existence. Hmm.
SPEAKER_01Is that um unifying force or something? You know, yeah. When I first started making them, I was thinking about how can you see your own personal karma and make friends with your karma to move forward in life. And when I first showed them, they were collective, so they did look like they were collectively, they could be singing like or they could be screaming the pain of the world. So I love that they hovered past, excuse the pun, between joy and sorrow, and that um they've just become such a simple symbol for me, which can say pretty much everything. It's like what the everything in all the works are trying to do. They're also trying to say everything, everything, everything under the sun. And there was a work in my most recent short station, which was a big sun, and it was called Everything Under the Sun. It's also just trying to say the same thing as this is just and the same thing as the turd, and the same thing as Jerod's.
SPEAKER_00But you're also trying to say it in a way which is not like um it's completely contrary to say, no, male abstract expressionism which says everything by saying nothing. You're trying to say everything by making very specific gestures that you put together in a way which leaves has enough connection but leaves enough space for all of that to flow from it. I hope so.
SPEAKER_01Then thanks, Amanda. I'll take that.
SPEAKER_00Well, I must say it it's been a but uh there it's been a joy to have this, but we but we we only we don't have here there's no eggs.
SPEAKER_01Ah well I might bring one over soon. I'll come over and lay one.
SPEAKER_00Um well listen uh before so we'll we'll we'll we'll wrap up, but before we do, do you do you have time to take us uh around our studio and talk about some future projects if you if they're relevant?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. Now I'm on my laptop, so it could be a little bit of a bumpy ride because I don't know what I can't see what you're gonna see. I'm gonna flip my um computer around. But yep, this one you'll see. Yeah, hopefully. So this is my studio at the powerhouse. I'm very, very, very lucky to be here. I've got these beautiful painting walls behind me. Actually, I'm just gonna move my screen to full screen. Um, I've been here just on a year and I'll I'll be here for another year. Um this is my table with all my cool one of my tables with all my cool things on it.
SPEAKER_00All my bits of ball kind of little marquettes. They might in it. Does that do that work for you as marquettes that you can sort of?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they're kind of like what I was talking about before, like sticker. Yeah, just moving things around and seeing how they look. Here's a some crystals. And uh, yeah, this is like a sewing table over here, and little there's a little um egg fella. I don't know, can you see him? I'm not gonna think you can see him. Yes, yes, yeah. And then, yeah, this is so work tables, and I've been working on a quilt. And uh, this is another table which has got I'm climbing up a ladder, so you can see the quilt that I've been working on the last few days. This is my beautiful workbench. There's an egg on a stool there. Um, you can see guitar on the table, another painting wall. Um, yeah, I've got ceramics on the floor on the go here.
SPEAKER_00It's very clear that now that stools, one way or another, pay a big work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, they're kind of riffs on plints, you know? Yeah, they're they they're riffs on plints. I don't know. Yeah, hella. And then there's some orange ghosts. This is my painting uh trolley. This is uh little storage area here where I'm able to store lots of things and keep them out of the main um the main space. Sorry if it's a bit dark here. Can you yeah, but we can see. You can see, yeah, and this is um all my boxes and bubble wrap and guitar amps. What a wonder world! Yeah, it's a bit of a wonder world. You'll have to come and look in real life. You know, see the studio. It's um, you know, heaven on earth for me. There's um a work by Sony Albert. Can you see that? Yeah, Tony gave me that, and then this is um signed to me from uh Angus Young from ACDC. I then that's spray painted when I worked on a film clip at ADDC, and then continuing the studio tour. This is my kitchen area and where I get changed and a lot more storage and uh my plants, which is not here in the studio. It's a huge studio. I've got more storage of likes more ceramics along here, and then don't get dizzy, folks. We're gonna turn around, walk over here, a little skateboard up there, and then um along here, more of the patches that I've been working on. Painting over there. I had to uh yeah, I'm very, very lucky too. It's a really great studio for being able to work on multiple things at once and to be able to store things like this. Was the sculpture we were talking about before. Yeah. So that's the studio. Well, thank you. I mean, it looks um, and how long will you be there for? Uh, another year and a half. This building will actually be demolished, and this will be the new entrance to the powerhouse. And if I show you here, this is these are the train tracks that go all the way to central from straight along the goods line to central. And if I turn around, these the train tracks went straight into the powerhouse museum. So the train tracks go through my studio, which has a lovely relationship to my previous studio at Howage Works, which was on the railway tracks and Iverly works.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so yeah, on Brand. Um, thanks so much. I mean, I saw that little, we probably haven't got time to talk about it now, but I saw the little word that you said Tony Albert gave you. And I know you're working on a big commission, so we'll leave people with a tantalizing um thought that the tantalizing information that you are going you are working on a large public commission with Tony called Big Hose. Um, we look forward to seeing it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, Tony and I are having a blast, and we look forward to delivering it. And um, hey, I've absolutely loved our conversation. Randy, you asked some fantastically insightful questions, and I look forward to seeing you in real life.
SPEAKER_00Um, me too. Thanks very much, and it was just great to be able to do a deep dive into your work and um and also to see you in Mr. View. So thanks very much, Nell. See you soon.