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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 #12 | Nadia Hernández & Jon Campbell
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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 feature's Nadia Hernández and Jon Campbell's collaborative project, Sure, a coffee sounds great, comprising setlists and drawings. Campbell has been collecting setlists from bands for several decades now and frequently incorporates them into his installations and artworks. Hernández has included a body of work from her loose and intuitive drawing practice that covers her studio walls, offering points of departure for new work.
Recorded in November 2023, 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 their practice.
Campbell is represented by Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney and Hernández is represented by STATION.
Additional information, including the video version of this podcast, is available here.
Hello, and welcome to the 12th iteration of Love Arts Nano Project, Love for Art, where we continue to multitask our mini guest powder room as a sort of um Boite de Belize to counter the increasing size and complexity of more institutional contemporary practice with explorations of a different scale. Here on Garigoland, so I do pay my respects to the Aori Nation and all its peoples. We investigate the tiny and the one-to-one to showcase the strength of current aesthetic and artistic expression, which is by necessity innovative and ingenious. I'm Amanda Lull, and it's my great pleasure to introduce our latest site-specific installation, our first collaborative project, which is titled Sure, A Coffee Sounds Great by Belfast-born mid-career artist John Campbell, who lives and works in Melbourne, and the rapidly emerging Nadia Hernandez, who was born in Venezuela and lives and works between Sydney and Melbourne. You can find their extended biographies on our website. Welcome. John for your studio in Melbourne.
SPEAKER_03And Nadia is I'm in my studio in Sydney. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02In in your studio or stockroom?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, in my studio.
SPEAKER_02Oh, good. Good. Yeah. Thank you very much. It's great to see you both again. And I thought that um as this is the first time we um, you know, this is the first we've exhibited a collaborative work here, as obviously the space is a tight fit for one person, I can say sitting here, let alone two. I mean, it was incredible how you managed it, kind of sort of art sardines. But um before coming to the collaboration, I thought we'd do a quick run through of a few of your solo exhibitions just to get a sense of your individual practices, and then we'll move on to the collaborative side of your work if that suits.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah, it's fine.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, sounds great. Okay. So I've made the call to take Age Over Beauty here. So we'll begin with you, John. And I thought we'd we'd start and look at uh Staxon, which I have to say for me was a a truly memorable goosebump moment when I experienced it on first entering the Melbourne Art Fair in 2010. Um, I mean, it could be that I just love a good aphorism, but in truth, I think it was the way in which you'd seamlessly fuse the various aspects of your practice, which I was familiar with, being personal experience, words, the Australian vernacular in particular, music generally of the independent type, sport, and also the essential, but very hard to tap notion of play and humor via something which is very personally dear to me, a visually transformative object. So I wondered if you could just talk, take, talk us through this piece.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, no worries. Um, thanks for that, Amanda. Um, yeah, I guess this was a fairly major work for me at the time, and um, it was the biggest work that I'd ever made to this date. And um I guess it was a kind of culmination of a whole lot of things that I've been thinking about over the previous years, and um in terms of using various uh words and texts in you know, paintings and flags, and um this uh commission allowed me to kind of bring a bunch of that together in the one place. And so it does feel a bit to me like it's uh really is a conversation piece, and it's you know, the the kind of voices in it come from um the everyday and my own history and Australian history, and as you mentioned, there's there's a range of kind of subject matter that um in other instances might just be, you know, uh might just make a painting related to music, let's say. Um whereas in this uh installation it had a kind of a bit of everything in a way, and um and you know, things were talking, works were talking to each other uh, I guess, across time.
SPEAKER_01Was that the first time you'd used light boxes um in your work?
SPEAKER_05Uh yes, I had um I'd used neon before, and so I'd kind of worked with um illumination or the idea that uh these ideas could go out in a different medium. And um the light boxes uh allowed me to kind of activate that space.
SPEAKER_02It's it was a pretty huge space, actually, at the awful space, very overwhelming.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it was pretty tricky, and um but in the end I liked how my work sat against the architecture, you know. There was something to kind of um almost butt up against, I guess.
SPEAKER_02Um that was fantastic.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and and and also, you know, there is the challenge there of how to activate that, you know. It i i in the middle, it was sort of under the dome there, and um, it was a very crowded area, and uh so it needed something that could kind of take that site. And um and the banners then, given the of course the height of the um of the exhibition buildings, that did allow to really, you know, take the banners up so they could be viewed from the first floor of the um exhibition building. So I did feel it was quite kind of experiential, I guess, the work.
SPEAKER_02Oh, it was. And of course I'm highlighting that work to show the grand scale upon which you you can work. So then we'll come back to the tiny scale here later. But when you talk about a conversation, that work did end up having a life of its own and a conversation because uh that work was um commissioned by the Melvin Art Fair, and we shouldn't acknowledge with uh help from the fabulous philanthropists, the Coe family and the Morden family, but the MCA actually finally bought it and then presented it in their museum alongside another wall work that they'd commissioned from you called Absolutely Disgusting, which was a 65-meter wall painting. Um, and that was some seven years later, I think. Um, and in that wall painting, you'd you'd sort of abstracted letters and words into colourful and and what I'd call very joyful patterns. I s and I I always supposed that that was a kind of disguise for the irreverent humour, which I I know is common to much of your art. How how do you how did you orchestrate um all of these conflations of seemingly minor moments put together over a seven to ten, you know, seven to eight year period?
SPEAKER_05I think with the um the great thing about being able to work with and in an institution like the MCA, um, you can bring kind of resources to the project. And um luckily they wanted to expand on the original work uh with the inclusion of the wall painting. Um I'd been working with it, that text absolutely disgusting. Um I wanted to make it, as you say, a kind of uh a joyful kind of interpretation um of that saying, giving that saying's got, you know, a kind of harder edge to it, that um, you know, that in in presenting the work, it can look kind of joyful and then it can give you a bit of a punch in the gut once you um it reveals itself, let's say. And um it became again about how to, you know, what to do with the space, how to activate the space. Again, you know, there's a nice big blank wall there, which I didn't have um in the exhibition buildings. And so it was a great opportunity to activate that and um activate that at scale. And uh again, as I said, you've got the beauty of bringing the you know the team from the MCA on board and you can make these things happen.
SPEAKER_02No, it's again another it was an incredible experience to walk into it. Um so it if we move on just to get a sense of the full gamut of the stylistic trajectory of your practice. Should we let's quickly flip through a few commercial shows from the mid-20s, starting with um, shall we say Darren Knight stand at the at Art Basel in uh Hong Kong? Because I I'm as as we just touched on humour, which and I'd and you you mentioned that you know a lot of your humour is deadly serious in the sense that it it there's a punch in there if you if you laugh hard enough. Um did you feel the need to be more, let me say, reverent in the at an art fair situation?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, possibly, you know, like I do like the f art fairs and I do like exhibiting at art fairs, and um you do tend to think a little bit more about, you know, the audience and um you know, these in many cases thousands and thousands of people. It was like tens of thousands in art Hong Kong. And so yeah, I sort of I guess with the texts in these that um I sort of think of them as the kind of collection of fuck paintings, and um that the word fuck became the kind of key that kind of held all the works together in a way, and um and even though they kind of look initially like abstract paintings, um, they can be unraveled and if you want to spend the time with them. And yes, you might get a laugh out of that, or it might upset you, or it might allow you to think about something in a way you hadn't thought about it before. So um, and then I guess there's also the thing, even though they're a bit abstracted, I guess for um a lot of the audience that maybe English wasn't their first language, might not read them at all and would just see them possibly as abstract paintings, which again it is fine. Uh I guess in the more recent works, I have been uh more and more concerned with the the initial kind of visual impact of the work, um, as opposed to I guess getting the uh word or the idea straight away. You have to maybe look and work a little bit for that to be revealed.
SPEAKER_02And I I think that sort of comes through in your in your next show, in which was 2022, um last year, at Darren Knight's gallery in Sydney, where I presume you could let loose and and do whatever you whatever you wanted. The title was It Is What It Is. So was that what it was?
SPEAKER_05Uh yeah, I guess it is what it is. Was one of those was a saying that again, you know, these sayings are hanging around um all the time, and then uh at certain moments it becomes, you know, uh comes to the front of mind and um makes its way into a work. And it is what it is, did come out of that COVID period, you know, that everyone was saying it all the time, like we're kind of stuck in this uh situation and um and we couldn't really do much about it. And um and so that was the kind of starting point for it. But I'm also interested that it is what it is, is kind of defeatist as well, and that you don't necessarily have to buy into that, you know, that to go, well what can you do about it, you know, can you change something here? So I like that that title was kind of again, I guess a bit double-edged. And um having the whole gallery at Darren's, it did allow me to kind of really expand in this show as well. And it included sculptures and works on paper and uh collaborations with other artists. Someone said to me is it felt like I'd had about six shows in, could have had six separate shows going on um this instance, which I quite like that actually.
SPEAKER_02Well, no, definitely, and definitely there was sort of an edge creeping in there. And then then you had another show with Darren in Melbourne, which your title this time was Barking Up the Wrong Tree. And um, as we've just you've just demonstrated as a wordsmith of the highest order, I am tasked to wonder, was that title in race in relation to your work or your life, or both, or neither?
SPEAKER_05Um, I I would say all of it, you know, like um that's uh again, it's I guess I'm looking for like sayings like that that um, you know, could possibly have many meanings and um have a meaning for me to, you know, get the work started and as it goes out into the public, then um that the viewers will bring, of course, their experience to it. So, you know, sparking up the wrong tree could mean something different to all of us. And um, you know, it it it has that moment of taking, you know, the wrong path or having the idea and being very um, you know, possibly loud or obnoxious about it, and actually, you know, not having all the information and just uh, you know, kind of carrying on about things. Um and yeah, or you know, getting the wrong end of the stick. Uh these kind of sayings relate to each other. So I'd like to think that it has a kind of openness to it, um that the viewer can, you know, make up their own mind about what they think it means.
SPEAKER_02And maybe a political imperative um regarding those times.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah, possibly. And um, you know, I think the politics is there, you know, like the political discourse does have these a lot of the works in some ways could be generated by that, you know. Like it, you know, I'm always on the outlook for um words and sayings that kind of resonate with me, and then I think they could resonate in a in a larger way. And um a lot of those can come out of um politicians' mouths. And uh so you can really take that and um, you know, I guess expand upon that in terms of making it into a painting and putting it back into the public domain and uh to let people to keep thinking about these ideas.
SPEAKER_02Now, we're speed dating here, so talking about politics is the perfect segue to uh move on to Nadia and her practice. And so, Nadia, in discussing your practice, can we first highlight your inclusion of the um of the work from where you can't see the horizon and sight collides with the mountain? Um, and I'll have to get you to give give the Venezuelan translation of that. In the 2020 New South Wales Emerging Visual Arts Fellowship at, I have to say, our favorite art space in Sydney, Note Tool, the refurbishment will open 1st of December this year. Can you talk us through this work, particularly as to how you used personal experience um process and dialogue to signal the possibility of change, which in itself is a political um gesture?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, of course. Thanks, Samanda, for um inviting me along. Um yeah, so at Artspace for the 2020 Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship, I made this work. Um it's like a seven and a half meter long floor-to-ceiling artwork with a wall painting. Um 13 multi-painted textile banners that are anchored by this phrase that my grandfather casually shared with me in a phone conversation. Um he was telling me about the place where I'm from, and he just he just mentioned, you know, you're from the place where you can't see the horizon and sight collides with the mountain. And in Spanish that reads, don't seem elizante y la vista choca contra la montaña. And I just thought this was such a like beautiful and profound poetic way to describe the place that I was born in my home city of Merida, Venezuela. And I just feel like um in my practice, I often use these poetic survisors and like conversational fragments, everyday interactions to yeah, to speak to possibility of change, um to signal kind of coming together and for personal and political transformation, um, both within and outside the Venezuelan diaspora, to kind of reconnect with our sense of cadencia, which is also like a big theme in my practice. And that's the place where you gather your sense of strength originally. Um, for me, that's always been about looking at the natural environment of my home country that I both like long for and embody myself. And that's really what this work speaks to. This phrase, this sort of poetic declaration, almost like heroic stage set on the back of this more abstracted um landscape, like worldwork.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think that's um, I think that notion of uh artists who are displaced and who gather their strength. I think a lot of Australian artists who move overseas have this very same problem. You gather the sense of strength from where you're from, and then you're somewhere else, and you have to be able to somehow garner that strength when you're outside that environment. And it's um so it's I really understand what you're talking about there. Um after that show, so is it true that then you you you were immediately picked up by Station Gallery and had a show there?
SPEAKER_03It was shortly, shortly after the Artspace Fellowship. I had another show on at the same time at Merge Gallery. So um when Laura from Station moved to Sydney, she went to see both like very distinct bodies of wear. And um I was offered the exhibition in early 2021 and have been working with station since. Um that first solo body of wear was called Con La Punta de los dedos or with the tips of your fingers. And I was also trying to search for poetry, um, mainly in these recipes that my mom had shared with me that she'd passed down to me when I moved out of home. Um, and this this exhibition was interesting because it does encompass the full array of my exploration across different mediums. So there were paintings, textile installation, and also paper constructions. But yeah, it was quite significant to get to work with uh gallery like station, and it's definitely changed the trajectory of my career so far.
SPEAKER_02Um, and and then the very next year, which was last year, you received the prestigious McFarland Commission at ACA, which is a major uh institution in Melbourne, with a show called Sensible Owners of Our Happiness. I did feel like I could almost attempt to do that translation, but after you've been doing it so well, I'm not going to um go there. You you I'll leave it again.
SPEAKER_03You can.
SPEAKER_02Anyway, what I said, sensibiles buenas de nuestra felicidad. Is that terrible? Sorry.
SPEAKER_03No, it's right. It's great.
SPEAKER_02Anyway, here I feel that the um the multi-platform nature of your work was both kind of refined and at the same time hyper-mobilized. And I I wonder if you can quickly take us through, I know it's a complex show, but um just this show um which which does, as I said, express a complex interplay and array of emotions.
SPEAKER_03Yes, referred the McFarlane Commissions. Um, I created this 11-piece installation called Sensibles Manosanas Reflexidad or Sensible Owners of Our Happiness. And because of the ambition behind the McFarlane Commissions, I wanted to challenge the use of materials in my practice and create, try to find contrast between hard and soft, the fabricated and the handmade, to create an installation that felt both like a playground, a protest, a procession through the space that could challenge both the person viewing it and like the architecture of the institution in itself. But the sentiment in the title of the work came from a letter, a phrase that I found in a letter that my mom wrote. To me. And I just thought it was really beautiful where she reassures me that we're the owners of our own happiness. And I was just kind of reflecting on Venezuelan art history and like this history of modernism. And I wanted to speak to different uh architectural buildings that were built in Venezuela in the 50s. And one of them was the Elicoida, which is a prison, but originally it was conceived as a shopping center. And I was like kind of inspired by this downward spiral motif of this now prison, as well as Gio Ponte's Villa Planchard and like the modernist aspects of that house. So I kind of wanted to speak to those two buildings through the palette, through the motif, and create, I guess, um a memory or my own like to be able to sort of distill those those ideas together in light of the current political situation. So something that's both spiraled. Like all encompassing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Dharma Spiral direct directly alludes, doesn't it, to that much less utopian trajectory that's happening in Venezuela and has been playing out since the 80s, um, which belies the title, which is a more joyful, positive title of the whole exhibition.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, exactly. I was trying to find kind of these contrasts between the personal and the political and the joy as celebration, as well as like the more unfortunate aspects of what's happening in my country.
SPEAKER_02Um finally, let's look at your exhibition, which closed just last week, again at Station, which as I said opened the new Sydney Gallery, and was titled Our Constellation, My Constellations. Um and this was predominantly painting.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so we were at the exhibition, the last exhibition that I just closed, yeah, a couple of days ago at Station, I wanted to take the opportunity to really push my painting practice and focus solely on paintings after coming up the back of these um bigger bodies of work that were mainly installation-based. Um, I think it was it was kind of a relief to get to just focus on one medium and I'm excited by aspects that I hadn't been able to push in the work before in terms of the use of like medium and um the layering and even the themes within the body of work in itself. I think I'm really interested in in always reflecting on um, you know, what it means to be a Latinx person in Australia and the way that I investigate that is through looking at like my own, the own history of um the own, like Venezuelan art history in particular. And I was interested in two things. One was the Latin American photo book, um, which mainly focused on imagery that was taken in urban environments, and I wanted to contrast that with Armando Raveron's paintings um and his sort of notion of like longing and wanting to capture the light of the Caribbean. So for me, it was about finding like a synthesis between the natural environment and the urban environment, and yeah, creating this sort of like landscape paintings in some way.
SPEAKER_02It was a beautiful exhibition, um, and it was it was it was terrific to see it. So now we come to the big reveal, your both of your first collaboration, which was called Speech Patterns, Nadia Hernandez and John Campbell. And it was installed last year at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, of which I think we have a short, just two-minute video which sets the scene very nicely. We can play that.
SPEAKER_00In the everyday, it's all around us.
SPEAKER_02I hope we can hear the sound.
SPEAKER_00Is clearly they are buoyantly optimistic and celebratory artists, which is kind of rare in the contemporary art world. And between them, we can see the kind of political flicker and that kind of sense of personal expression come into play.
SPEAKER_06I like this idea of the sort of everyday and everyday language in how we speak to each other. It could be the use of the word view. It was more about um the street. You yet scared it into the everyday language. Shit, yeah, in the hell yeah, in the fuck yeah. I'm sort of looking for sayings that reflect my own history, where I've grown up, what it means to live in Australia now, or open up a conversation about who we are.
SPEAKER_03I'm often, you know, using a lot of conversations, anecdotes, even recipes, these sort of everyday exchanges that I that I had with my family. We're all sort of spread throughout the world. For me, making work as a way to stay connected to them. They can't be here today, but I know that they're in the work. So I feel like their presence in each of the artworks. To see the work installed in the art gallery of Western Australia alongside John's work, it feels surreal, to be honest, and it feels quite overwhelming for me as a young artist. Robert saw the links in her work, and then through that, we started to see the links in our work.
SPEAKER_06We've only just met recently just because of the show.
SPEAKER_03And now have like this great friendship that's that's emerging.
SPEAKER_02Opening this show up, I think I feel if so um I said I'll leave it to you to answer first who who speaks here. But so really, this this collaborative project um process was essentially a match made in Western Australia.
SPEAKER_05Yes. And um, it really was the brainchild of um the curator, Robert Cook. I mean, he you've got to give him the full credit here that um he, you know, it was his idea. He thought this would be great to um make a show of Nadia and myself, and it turned out to be right.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Oh, sorry.
SPEAKER_02Well, I was going to say, because I mean I actually think it was a a brilliant, um, a brilliant um putting pairing, because I mean your practices ha have such a um a sort of similarity, but in a completely different way, and they play off each other beautifully. I mean, Nadia, your practice, I mean, as I understand it and as as you described it, is definitely a way of keeping alive your concerns about friends and family and place in the face of sort of a global disorder that has affected you personally and politically. And John, you know, you're also you you were born overseas in a conflicted zone, but have grown up in Australia. And your practice seems deeply embedded in what I can only describe as the endlessly layered and complicated contingencies of the ever-shifting, um, for want of a better word, um, a sense of what's Australianness. It's sort of, it's sort of a um a mix between um, you know, you know, which is essentially being defined and redefined and and lauded and critiqued by critiqued by a a post-war educated but suburban generation, of which I'm totally a part. And it's a kind of my brother Jack meets the lucky country type of attitude. I was gonna ask both of you uh about irony.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, look, for me, the there's moments of it, but you know, it's not the driving thing in my work, you know. I'm after a more uh, you know, naturalistic or experiential kind of experience, you know. I'm happy to take the piss and um you know, have things that might have several meanings to them, but um and on occasion irony's there, but um it's not all ironic, you know. There's a a sense of kind of um there's more of a kind of honesty or some kind of truth or you know, something else I'm trying to get at here that um does come out of my experience. And um so yeah, and I I guess it's a it was very interesting seeing my work next to Nadia's, and as you said very nicely there, Amanda, there is um you know, similarities that you might not think about initially, you know. And uh once you start to look through more kind of historical moments or you know, the attitude of the migrant, um and you know, I guess for both of us in some ways making me having been here a lot longer, but still trying to make some sense of as you say, you know, who we are at this point in time. And it is shifting, and I actually like that it's shifting, you know. I like that we are in the middle of this now. Um, you know, we've got a very important referendum coming up, you know, like there's there's things still going on, a lot of work to be done. And so for me, being here at this point in time, it's a great place to be as an artist, I must say.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think I feel similar. And for me, the links between Joanna's works are ever, ever unfolding and emerging, which is really exciting, and it's why I feel like collaborating has come so naturally after this exhibition and during the exhibition. And I think in terms of irony in my work, there's definitely humor. I'm very like attracted to the use of humor to uh unravel these complex and almost impossible ways to describe like my experience here and what's happening back home and my position amidst all of this, but there's also like an overarching sense of sincerity, which is for me like the sincerity and the poetic are the driving forces behind it.
SPEAKER_02I I I I I can definitely see that. I mean, there seems to me to be a fundamental sociability in the nature of both of your work. I mean, and absolutely a will to connect and engage to, I wouldn't say, to make the pie bigger rather than simply re-slice it, no matter what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, look, I think so. And and and um, you know, you never really know how these things are gonna go. I mean, Robert might have seen something in the work, um, but maybe the work actually does hold our personality in there. And um, you know, maybe it's not that surprising that um, you know, we'd become friends and you know, through starting to basically spending the first time we did together in Perth, um, and you know, straight away, you know, had this great kind of connection and engagement together and started to think about, you know, other things we could do. And um, you know, we've ended up in in your bathroom.
SPEAKER_02Well, exactly. That brings us precisely to our bathroom because our nano bathroom, because I mean it's one thing to collaborate in an ever so grand institutional space of the art gallery of Western Australia, but this tiny bathroom for which you proposed the work, sure, a coffee sounds great, is another thing entirely. I mean, you've created here a paste up that features set list and drawings by both of you. John, I know you've been collecting these set lists from bands for several decades now, and you've often used them and you've incorporated them in your work and installations. And Nadia, your works are from a more loose and intuitive drawing practice. I know because I'm spent a lot of time in here now, and it's really interesting to look and and pick the difference between the works and and and the similarities. Um, and so, you know, as I as I sit here amongst the mat, the mash, um, the voice I hear is is is sort of lyrical on the one hand, but also poppy. But I mean it does speak clearly about everyday struggles, feelings, and desires. And I wonder what what what drew you to accept this tiny proposal with your big ideas?
SPEAKER_03I mean, because I I remember, I think it was last year that Isabella had reached out and I've been marinating on okay, what what what could it be, what could the bathroom be? But it really it was when I started working with John in the at the art gallery, and I thought this is what, this is the perfect, the perfect idea, the perfect concept to take to love art. Um and to explore it further to see, you know, what would it, what would it feel like to use original drawings? Like what does that dialogue become? Um, how do we continue to push our practices together and how do we continue to like create a dialogue between our works? Um, so yeah, I feel like the bathroom's been it's been perfect as a as a vehicle, all honestly. As a vehicle.
SPEAKER_02You know, I mean, I was here for most of the two days during which you installed this work, and from what I could um understand, um, there was something pretty unique, playful, but also very purposeful and intense, not to mention quite durational, that was going on here. Um, so would you would you both give us a brief description in turn of the trajectory of those two days that and sort of how pay pay stuff played out for you in terms of approach and execution?
SPEAKER_05I guess for me that we'd, you know, we've had a kind of test run to some degree over in Perth. Um, even though it was on a much different space, of course, in this kind of large foyer space and we're up on platform lifts and had a few assistants helping. Um the kind of idea has remained um about this um, you know, kind of butting our work up against each other. And um I guess we're because we kind of established uh the kind of I guess parameters of the work, these, you know, A4 size um drawings in Nadia's case, um mostly photocopy works in my case, but also some that were drawn over in this instance, um it then becomes very I I guess intuitive when you are in the space, you know, like it really just which is a beautiful way to work. And you you know, Nadia puts one up here, I put one up next to it, Nadie puts one up on that wall, I put one up next to it. You really are just in the moment with it, and you know, shuffling through the collection to go, that might look good with that, that might look good with that. There's all kinds of things that come into that for me about you know, colours or words or gesture. Um of course, in the all the band set lists are all handwritten lists, and I think that for me has a nice relationship to Nadia's work. Um the lists themselves are full of you know words that uh kind of expand out from them being uh list of song titles to in this situation um can be more intense or poetic, and then they're in relationship to Nadia's work. So in some ways it is quite a um kind of joyful um moment, but it also has some, you know, I guess sort of energy or tension about you know moments in it. There's a lot to look at there.
SPEAKER_03There is. And and for you, Nadia? Yeah, I was gonna add like the energy really transcends, and I think it comes from the fact that we were in there together, making these choices simultaneously, and um the way that the conversations that we have while we're doing uh the pace subs, also I feel like that's what sort of leads on to potential future collaborations, which is really exciting as well. Um, this hasn't been the end of it.
SPEAKER_02You will do future collaboration.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think so. If John wants to.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah, for sure. And and the paste up is a great way to work, you know. And the other great thing that I would say about the pasteup is that, you know, it generally for me was something that happened on the street, of course, and in terms of music, you know, band posters being the main uh um uh example of that. And so it's great to bring that indoors, you know, firstly into the institution and then into your you know your home. And uh so there's something nice in that, in the sort of um the physical sense of it, and a bit of the you know, the history or the nature of paste paste up generally is not something that happens in a domestic space.
SPEAKER_03Oh, just it just so you have sorry, now go on, Nadia. I was just gonna add a comment to hear what people think about it, the people that are using the powder room.
SPEAKER_02So far it's been very, very positive. People love it. Um, absolutely. Um we're running out of time, but I just have one I have one final question because, and this is sort of about club culture, because I know, Nadia, that you're a swimmer, um, which I totally resonated with it, because I grew up being a competitive swimmer and doing all that 5:30 in the morning, 3.30 in the afternoon, Wednesdays, weekends, all that stuff. And John, you were a footballer. Um, so you obviously both have a competitive street, but of course, one is an individual sport and the other a team sport. And the two of you spent two whole days in this nano-bathroom as part of a willfully and knowingly ongoing collaborative process. But um I, you know, you are two individual people, obviously. Um, did were there any competitive moments?
SPEAKER_01Does competition play any part at all in this for for better or for worse?
SPEAKER_04Well, you know, I had to hold Nadia back. She wanted to take part.
SPEAKER_05Um no, like it was very um one for one and uh uh, you know, very kind of democratic, and I was very conscious, I must say, maybe Nadia was as well, about kind of going 50-50 on this.
SPEAKER_03I'm very imbalanced.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and the second day of the install that I had come in a little bit earlier and I was getting started and there was a bit of space, and I'm like, I could easily just start the all of this myself, but uh I had to hold back.
SPEAKER_04Um well done, John.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, because Yeah, it um I hope it feels like that when people are in there.
SPEAKER_02It's enjoy it is trying to look and see and imagine the process, you know, and you can see it in the work and you can see it um on the works as you as you place them. Um so uh was there anything my final question is was there anything specific that each of you took away from having worked this way in this space, um, whether from the other's practice, attitude, approach, I mean it could be negative, positive, anything specific.
SPEAKER_03I think the every time I work with John, I feel like the um it becomes more evident Robert's decision to bring us together. I feel like every time as I get to know John more and more, I'm like, ah, this is another link. This is another link. So it's forever like finding more links within our practices. And I think that um, yeah, it's just it's interesting to see how like this work will continue to be developed and um decisions that we probably hadn't discussed, but have just emerged from the act of doing the installation, like choosing to put a flat color somewhere and having like a dialogue and an ongoing collaborative process is really interesting because I think for me personally, I I haven't I collaborate, I find different ways to collaborate within my practice, but in my studio it's very much just me. And so it's it's been great to to get to work with John and to see how this process will continue to develop.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's kind of great that you don't really know where everything's going and uh that these moments and opportunities come up, and um big small doesn't really matter to me. And um they're still all kind of important to do. And um, you know, you know, I would I ever have thought I'd get to do a paste up in your bathroom, Amanda? Probably not, but um here we
SPEAKER_02are and that's one of the beautiful things about this and um yeah there's a lot of room for for the collaboration you know as Nadia said we've both got you know Papley in our studio making you know essentially our own things most of the time and for me there's you know this need next to that um that the collaboration kind of fills and uh it does open up things you know like again the possibility of what else we can do um you know that's just kind of exciting and who knows the whole house next don't all no problem no problem that'd be great John Nadia uh thank you so much it's been such a pleasure talking and I feel nano living with you and um and of course this work I feel is really going to buoy us through the holidays and into the new year and we'll look forward to the um to the performance at our soiree later on this year. I also have to say huge thanks also to my colleague Isabella Chow who's produced researched and facilitated this iteration and the whole of our love arts series she's about to embark upon an international career within which I know she's going to fly to the sky and so watch this space. She'll be sorely missed. Goodbye everyone please come and see the exhibition by appointment you'll be able to reference this interview archived on our website and Instagram at LoveArtInational see you next time. Bye. Bye bye thank you