Love[f]Art #14 | Augusta Vinall Richardson

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 Augusta Vinall Richardson, a Melbourne based artist working with sheet and cast metals to make abstract composite sculpture. "The assemblage of my works, composed of separate, individual parts, reflects my philosophy: societies are formed through the coming together of distinct bodies—nature, buildings, animals, and people." - Richardson.

Recorded in December 2024, 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.

Richardson is represented by The Commercial, Sydney.

Additional information, including the video version of this podcast, is available here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello and welcome to the 14th iteration of Love Art's nano project Love for Art, where, in contrast to the increasing size and complexity of much institutional contemporary practice, we multitask our mini guest powder room as a Boite de Valise via explorations of a different scale. Here on Gadigal Land, we investigate the tiny and the one-to-one to showcase the strength of current artistic expression, which is, by necessity, innovative and ingenious. I'm Amanda Love, and it's my great pleasure to introduce our latest installation, Better to Make Sense of Me Than You. I See Me, I See You, by Augusta Vinyl Richardson. Augusta is an emerging artist based in Melbourne where she literally person handles positive and negative spaces, shape-shifting them into precarious modules, whose point of departure is simultaneously the exquisite fragility of care and support and its evil twin, the inherent instability of dominant social structures. You can find her extended biography on our website. So welcome, Augusta. I'm very pleased to see that you are in your Melbourne studio. I thought you weren't going to be there.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

No, I um I made it back. Yeah, and I just wanted to you've probably done an acknowledgement, but um I just want to acknowledge I'm on yeah, we're on G country. But not in arm, yeah. Yeah. Um and Yeah. Hello.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

So before we move on to discussing your work, um, as I'm someone who prides myself on having a stellar name, I'm fascinated by yours. And I wanted to know whether it was you or your parents who who made it up.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Um definitely my parents. It's a mixture of my mum's last name, sorry, and my dad's last name. So Varna Richardson and Augusta is, I think, old English. Um my mum name, or we me and my sister both have um kind of unusual names. Um and yes, it's been a up and down journey with the name. Um but uh yeah, no, I like it now. But yeah, there's no um good story behind it.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yeah. Great name. And I mean to have vinyl in your middle name, that's that's a a classic.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Yeah, it's um it's nice. Yeah, I passed it down to my son.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Oh nice. So I've been looking over your CV, which as I said before is on our website, and I counted that you've obtained no less than five degrees and diplomas over the last 14 years, covering an impressive span of both practical and theoretical skills. Did did you plan this trajectory or did one skill set obtained lead to another being soul?

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Yeah, it was kind of um, it happened, yeah, kind of, I guess, reactively, for want of a better word. Um, so yeah, I studied textile design when I finished high school, um, because I knew that I wanted to do something creative, but I didn't know quite what that was. Um, and it was really beautiful course in at TAFE in uh in Melbourne at RMIT in Brunswick. Um, and it was with a lot of older women, so that was quite nice, the sharing of knowledge. Um and then uh yeah, I went to art school after that. And I feel like keeping on studying was the way to keep making art uh I found. Um like so a way to keep up the studio practice for like um in an affordable way. Um, but then with my postgrad studies, it was more about yeah, wanting to seek the knowledge and um work hard on kind of making more sense of what I was trying to do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

So if we look at your early works, such as, for instance, was shown in Turtle Dove at Verge in Sydney in 2017, where you drew in acrylic paint on the windows of the gallery, or your um large-scale sculptural work, which was the workhorse at MADA, your which was your graduate Melbourne's Monash University in 2019, along with the other work, All Bodies Want a Free Flow. If we look at these works in the context of your work Tides One and Two, which you exhibited us one year later in Sounds of Pacing at Connor's Connor Gallery, um, which is an artist-run space in Melbourne's Fitzroy, I feel that there's a a real shift that's happened here, as if you'd had some kind of breakthrough or a or epiphany in the interim. What what what how would you explain that evolution?

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Um, yeah, I guess it's a it's a it's a um it seems from the outside uh a random trajectory, but um it all kind of, yeah, every work feeds off the other. Um but yeah, I kind of guess I was searching for like a mode of expression. Um, and drawing has always been like a foundation of my practice. And I used to kind of in arts early art school, I was kind of really into um, you know, abstract expressionism and like Albert Olin and all these kind of German American and American painters, and I would do lots of oil painting and it but it just never seemed quite enough. And then I was kind of searching for a way to make my drawings and mark making into finished works or more resolved works, or somehow wanting to find a way to make the drawing come off the page, and um that's when I started using a projector, and um, yeah, so that was kind of where those wall, uh those wall and um uh on the glass and things like that kind of painting came about. And it was kind of about um also like the being able to travel with it and all that kind of stuff, like a sense of like practicality and transport and um kind of like making something monumental out of something basic. Um and yeah, so then I was kind of looking at like Lily van der Stocker and others like that. Um and then um, like I guess the drawings from the Everly show, um, the Sydney at the Verge Gallery, Verge Gallery, um, are kind of held by a frame. Um, and I guess I was really caught up with the boundary in which the work sits or can be read. Um, and so I guess that relates to my box sculptures and other cast works, which suggest a box or some kind of containment, even if it's not visually there. Um, and those uh those um those works you can uh are are a part of at your um residence at the moment, Amanda, um, as some of those past works which have that.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Yeah, yeah. Definitely. I was gonna say that Sounds of pacing seems to have been very pivotal in another way, because it was the first time I've seen that you completely repurpose steel offcuts. And I loved the way that the exhibition's title referenced footsteps, yet the works emanate a goofy kind of human warmth, notwithstanding their industrial materials.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Yeah. Um, so this was my first foray into working with metal. Um, and yeah, it's um I always wanted to make a work just in steel because I I previously worked with the the G-string work and the other works. I was using wire and then a steel armature um inside the paper mache. So um, and then I met someone who had uh who was a steel fabricator. Um, and I started working with him to make works, and this was the first work. And I feel like I once I'd made this, I realized it kind of it was a super pivotal point because I'd found kind of found what I was looking for, I guess, finally, in in the metal. Um, and it yeah, it was super experimental and there was no pressure on it. We I had to make it in like a couple of weeks. It was very like um, no time to think, just do. Um, and I kind of yeah, it was really satisfying. Um like working because you can see, I can feel the breakthrough. Yeah, and um, yeah, it was those forms were informed by I was camping at the time down on Apollo Bay, and um there was these jagged rocks that intersected with one another um on like where we were camping, and that was kind of yeah, kind of where I came to with those those kind of jagged intertwined forms. And it was originally meant to be a floor work, and then when I was mate, when we were making it, we stood it up and it just stood on its own in a precarious fashion. But yeah, it was made sense. So yeah, it was it really came from that one work. And then I was just starting to do my masters, so at the time, um, and they like kind of like that's when I really sucked my teeth into exploring metal and what it means, and and kind of that was my thesis um over the next two years was working um with metal and writing about working with the steel as well.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

So we before we get on to steel, because simultaneously, while you were doing your master's, your tertiary, your master's degree, um, you were also having shows because if we move on to Tita, which was again at Connor's Connor Gallery in the days of 2021, I have to say, here, rudimentary materials notwithstanding, uh, because it's primarily cardboard, it's an extremely sophisticated and complete compendium of the threads that continue to sustain your practice as it lives and continues to evolve now. Can can you speak to this? I think this is a very important exhibition.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Oh, thank you. Yeah, it was it was really um, it was a really weird time to be making art and thinking about art making during COVID. And um I yeah, was through you my unique situation, um, I was able to keep making during that time, which was really great because I had a private studio. It wasn't like being shut down or anything like that. Um, but I'll just read out my exhibition text I wrote about the work, which is kind of about process and yeah, speaks to the work itself. So laying out paper stencils, I follow their outline with the texture onto steel sheeting. I cut them with a handheld corded grinder. I manipulate each flat piece of steel using a vise to secure the steel, tin grips, and a rubber rubber mallet to coerce the flight steel into bending. I keep bending and hitting the steel with the mallet until a piece of steel emulates the contours I need. These activities encompass the beginning stages from a process of transformation from flat paper to form. The shapes cut from steel take on a dimensionality that they do not have on the drawn page. The act of cutting into the sheet metal signals a clear intention and direction. Each shape has yet to be realized, however, and the effort and reward of building a multiple multitude of three-dimensional shapes is yet to come. Teetering between the complete and the possible, the first cuts provide a pathway to a new dimension. And so I guess that text, I was just like actually just experiencing what it's like to work with the metal. Like, so that was like probably like an early, another early steel work. And then I've got the cast, the cardboard casting, because there was a big gap in like even my ability to go to the studio. And so I started making the work in cardboard and paper mache to emulate this as if I was making it in steel. So I made it with the same logic that I would when I'm working with metal.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

I feel that you kind of then, even though you were sort of working with your masters in steel and working on steel, you were you were you were not so faithful during this period because you seemed to have a love affair with cardboard. Because if we look on to uh template sketch, the exhibition you had in 2023 at Caves, which is another government-funded space in Melbourne, certainly cardboard was a star here with the sculptures being made and held together by paper, wax, glue, screws, and masking tape. Tell me about cardboard. Your your your brief, your your I think it's an early love but an enduring one.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Yeah, indeed. Um, I think, yeah, they're just the immediacy of it is um hard to beat. Um and I guess you can work through ideas faster with cardboard, and it's just something I do in my own time by myself. I'm not like out, I'm not exposed in a in the fabrication workshop. I'm not part of a larger ecosystem of the workshop and the sound and the machines and things like that. I'm just kind of um, it's kind of like a meditative introspective um activity. Um, and for this show alongside it, I did a publication with Rose Nolan, which was recorded conversations of us talking about process and materiality and how um that relates to each of our works in um separate and combined similar ways. Um so I was thinking a lot about that and talking a lot with her, and I was like quite inspired by her like um humble use of materials. Um, and so it yeah, it was I wanted this show to be more of a place of experimentation and a bit more vulnerable, I guess. So it was a really great opportunity to show works that I might not show in a commercial capacity.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Yes, still a very impressive show. So thank you. Um let's we you you mentioned drawing, of course, and w as as kind of a scaffolding of your work. And in your first curatorial effort, which was Essential Utility at AAAB Gallery in Melbourne, which was the same year, you said that you thought of drawing as well, I think just as you you just described, as the foundation of ideas. And you used beautiful words that you said it assaults the written or spoken word with its enormous and diverse ability to communicate and encompass plans, notions, theories, and emotions. Um, and in terms of your curatorial choices, you said wordlessly with words, it was the intensity of which the line is applied to the surface of the paper, fabric, or body that attracted you to the work that of the artist that you selected. So you you've just described that you don't see drawing as purely preparatory uh in your practice, and it does hold its own distinct mode of expression. But given your your statement about its ability to assault the written or spoken word, how do you navigate the transition between the fluent emotive nature of drawing and the tangible structured forms of your sculptures?

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Um, well, I actually it's a great question. I actually think of my sculptures as drawing in three dimensions. I um I kind of think them, think of them as drawings still um by um cardboard works and the freestanding steel sculptures. Um and even the work that's behind your behind you there is kind of like a drawing. Um and in terms of that curated show, I was keen on, I guess that took place. I had that art that gallery space that I um kind of ran for six exhibitions in 2022 when I was doing my masters. And I guess when you're doing that kind of um kind of high-level art education, like there's a sense of um uh community and sharing ideas and that kind of thing that is more, I feel like was really strong for me at that time and post-COVID. It was like just about getting work out there. And I really wanted to share or just platform some artists that I really like their work, and I don't think they get their time in the sunshine. Um, and drawing, I feel like is definitely like an underrated or secondary art um uh art form, but it's so foundational to like so many people's practices. And yeah, sometimes someone's practice is just drawing, and that's that's all you know, drawing on paper. And I kind of wanted to think about drawing in an expanded form. Um, so some of these works, yeah, just like a video work and then like rubbings, like a big wall work of rubbings of different um household items and things like that. So um I yeah, and I was um it yeah, it was kind of all the artists, all the artists you selected were women.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Was this in Tennessee?

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Is it uh yeah, not that I had any male artists that I was like, oh, I can't add them because they're they've got a penis. Like I wasn't really thinking like that, or or you know, thinking in that binaristic context. Um and I kind of write in the text, I go on to say this is um, you know, like obviously influences the way they make work and what they make work about and why they make it, but also like if we think of femaleness or womanness as like a um as like a uh state of mind or a way of being, not necessarily like a gendered in the like in a um not in a kind of gender way. Um so that's kind of how I was thinking about that. But in general, I feel like a lot of the time, unfortunately, um young male artists get more opportunities or are afforded more opportunities um in exhibition context than female artists, even though there's more and arguably better female artists out there. Um and I feel like, you know, everything's all yeah. So I just feel like that's just kind of like a um a not really talked about um real uh yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

So and all this while grappling with all of this, you were completing a master's of fine arts at Monas University, and your graduate show opened in 2022, and you you you write so beautifully, and uh I'm sure have a poetry practice because that exhibition catalogue had a short but very profound accompanying poem, which I think elegantly and powerfully deals with the ideas of process. And I wonder whether I can read it, but I'd wonder whether you would care to read it if you have it to hand.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Yeah, I can read it. Um probably recite it. It's easier, but uh the process of making a work begins on paper. The resulting work is a manifestation of a thinking, feeling body. Cognition and control allow the work to come together in the workshop space where tools and equipment are like personalities one must get to know. In this space, material comes together at the seams, edges become soft and slippery, and the accepted boundaries of the space become motile. Process becomes knowledge, becomes form.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

It's a wonderful piece of um writing, and it and it puts me in mind of one of my absolute favorite quotes in the whole world, which is by Robert Hughes from Shock of the New, where he talks about the basic project of art as making the whole world comprehensible. And I'll quote a bit of that. He says, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument, but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not. You and in this way pass from feeling to meaning. So I wondered where does meaning fit in your scenario? Is that what you referred to as knowledge, or is it something totally uh over and above form?

SPEAKER_00 22:15

Uh I I think I was I think I was trying to say in that text, I really like that um what you just read out. Um, or you know, Robert Hughes' um notion. I yeah, it's very good. Um I guess I was trying to explain that meaning or or like knowledge is material and is bodily and um as much as it is a cerebral kind of intellectual um thing manifestation. Um and so I feel like as as you work on the surfaces that the materiality or or like as I create um a surface texture or work into the metal or work on the work itself, I'm creating um meaning through that and not like um and that material knowledge is like passed onto the object itself.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

So it's every I think you was a meaningful act, you could almost say because it's it that's the meaning, the creation. Yeah. I feel like this exhibition took your geometric arrangements of three-dimensional shapes to to again to new extremes. Is looking at the work, I can see that each complete formal work was made of a series of smaller parts, which themselves reflect the morphing modular character of the entirety then of the larger form itself. I wondered how did your process of getting to know that you use the term getting to know the tools and materials in the workshop influence this new level of complexity in your sculptures? Perhaps it's a good time to talk about your studio here.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Yeah, um, I guess um it's a big question. Um, yeah, this is my studio. I do a little video for you to see. Um, I guess um but the big studio. Yeah, the the modular-like nature of the work speaks to the process-based um process, it's hard to explain. Um, the way I work with metal is very like you have to and and operate in the workshop space involves a very linear logical way of thinking. And it's it's based on, you know, like if a drill, if you miss if something the if there's not that click to connect action, the drill won't work, for instance, or the or the um, if the metal's not earthed, then I can't weld, like all these steps have to come together to make to to actually be able to weld in metal and work with the material. So I guess this kind of modularity and like speaks to that operational steps-based way of working in the workshop. And that uh that was how I thought about it originally, but then I've gone on to realize that like that modularity speaks to like or reflects my philosophical point of view on life, that we're all we're part of a larger whole and we're made up of interconnected parts, and we yes, society is um made complete by everyone within it, and everyone within it has their job and place, and it's a non-hierarchical system of order, but it is kind of illusory in a in a sense because there um there is chaos beneath, kind of, or within.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

Yeah. It's that idea reminds me of that idea of Brownian motion that you learnt about in biology or physics or something. Um we'll get back to the nation of precarity, but last year you took you to Bendigo for circles of dialogue at La Trobe Institute, and that exhibition took as its point of departure a single work in the La Trobe University collection, Dialogues of Circles, which is by Inge King. And that work's been sitting in the moat at Melbourne campus since its installation in 1976. And I believe that you've spoken and written about King's work as inspiration. But here you exhibited works including apexes, which we actually currently have installed here as part of your project, and in service of in service too. I wonder how King's practice, particularly her move from hand welding to fabricating, and this again to your tools and workshops, um, from you know, to have from hand welding to fabricating with others inform the way you approach these particular works.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

Yeah, so I wrote about Inga King and did some research on her as part of my master's thesis, and I really um you can really see, I was really inspired by her early works in metal, which where she was just like making it work, even if it was really bad welding and it was all kind of like molten metal and and it was super textural and really interesting. And then with her um with her later works where the her the notion of the hand is taken away, it becomes a completely different story and it loses some of that power for me. Um, and but obviously she's an icon and um and a really important artist in Australian art history. Um, and so um I guess I was writing and thinking about that tension between um that those really I really connected with those early works where she's like toying, fighting the material. Um, and you can see that in the work. Um and so um uh with my work that I made specifically for that exhibition, which is that big core 10 work, I was trying to, it was like in her in her shadow, I guess, that work, or or a tribute, I guess, in some way to her legacy. Um and um that's why I kind of left the world welds messy and exposed and that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

Um so while we're so just while we're discussing materials and tools and process, I wonder if I can get you to give a brief explanation of the differences between the various techniques you use to create works. The difference between forging and casting, for instance. I mean, as I understand it, the work, say the shape between, which we have currently installed here again as part of your project, that that's a forged work, isn't it? Is it?

SPEAKER_00 29:45

Um so um forging is uh I think a term associated with blacksmithing. So it's like about heating and beating the iron using an anvil and a hammer and like a a kind of furnace to heat up the metal to like a really hot degree. And that that's a kind of an another specialty I haven't had the privilege of exploring, but um I use sheet metal, so it's like paper or cardboard, it comes flat, and it's my job to make it three-dimensional. So I cut out my desired shapes with the grinder and weld them together, and like sometimes I do hammer them or beat metal so it it form, it gets in the line that I I want it to. But um, so for this work, I just got I got flat pieces of steel and and cut cut out the shapes, and then the one outsourcing thing I did was get get the middle parts rolled so it would form that nice circular shape, because that kind of had that's kind of is a level of uh um specialty that I can't do myself. Um, and then I've just welded them together and then I polished this myself, which was like a huge physical task, um, which was like a bit of an insurance challenge because you may know with like the yeah, something mirrored can always be more mirrored. Um so it's scared. Um you just kind of have to stop at some point.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

Um I used to try to polish rusty horseshoes when I was a child, rusty horseshoes and make Christine. My God, the time you spent.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

Yeah, it's um and it but it is really satisfying. It's one of those um, you're kind of like a slave to yourself kind of thing. Um it's an internal battle.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

Um so is the therapy in your work for you because I mean, the way you've talked about the cardboard, the the care and the time spent and the way you feel doing doing that, and the same thing with the the processing of the polishing of the metal and all that, is that meditative and nourishing for you?

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Definitely. Like I'm I'm a kinetic thinker. I guess I think through doing, and I think um that's kind of yeah. I guess I've worked through things in my mind while I'm making something. Um, and I guess each stage of the process or each kind of work I'm making requires a different level of um, I guess different level of intensity at each stage. So um, yeah, I guess that that's definitely like part of it for me. I wouldn't say it's like it's definitely some points very therapeutic. I wouldn't say it's like therapy, but it's very um, it's like definitely, I'm definitely like a hands-on kind of person. Like I get a lot out of that physicality um and being in my body.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Yeah. Actually, this um brings us nicely to the first time that I saw your work in the flesh, which was at the commercial galleries exquisite installation at the Melbourne Art Fair earlier this year. And the work we've just been speaking about, among others, was there. And I wondered how how did you feel about such a fulsome showing uh in an art fair, which is a completely different kettle of fish to an institutional exhibition?

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Yeah, absolutely. Um I think, yes, so the art fair was, yeah, so it's a my I had shown work at another art fair before this, but this was, yeah, like a lot more of a um awesome feeling, as you said. Um I think it's it's obviously like very different to a gallery context or a traditional exhibition context. Um the great, well, I mean, the great thing about it for me is that so many people see the work, whereas in a more ideal exhibition context, they may not. Um so I guess, yeah, but it was quite um daunting, I guess. Um, but yeah, I enjoyed it and I made the works kind of specifically for for the fair. Yeah. And but I guess I was thinking about it more like an exhibition, not really like an art fair. And um it looked like an exhibition, not an art fair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Story, even though it's like a a heightened commercial environment, I wasn't really thinking about that. I was thinking about the work and furthering and deepening my explorations with metal and the casting process.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

So I was waiting and we didn't talk about casting and just in our professed uh our process or so that some of these works are cast, these ones we're looking at now. And so that is the contemporary version of the lost wax method. Not using that not using wax, but using a substance that um is so it's actually with removed when the when the molten liquid, then molten um metal is poured in.

SPEAKER_00 35:06

Yeah, yeah. So it's um so it's um they make a mold out of or a copy of the cardboard work in wax, but then that then gets melted out when the bronze gets poured in.

SPEAKER_01 35:19

Yeah. Yeah nice. I I I thought the show was I was it blew me away, as you knew at the time. So at that time you were also included in the Melvin Sculpture Biennial, which was the burden burden of objects at Villa Alba. And your piece there, Crushing Again, I loved the fact that you you decided to leave the back of the box shape open in in a sense that it softens the the potential, the obvious brutal nature of the work. Did did you in was this a satisfactory choice for you?

SPEAKER_00 35:53

Um yeah, I was I always wanted, so the original of that work was exhibited at Caves um for that template sketch exhibition, which we kind of um went over uh earlier in this discussion. Um and then I exhibited it this year at the National Works on Paper Prize. Um so I was kind of wanting to make, I was wanting to see, it was like a test to see if the steel would I could get the steel to emulate the paper, the paper version. So I was just following the same logic as I had to when I made the the paper version. So the paper version was just whole like just had it, it was backless as well. So it was just the armature and then like the paper over the top. So I guess that was where my head was at in terms of like how I went about making it. But I feel like got a lot of feedback and about the work. Um and some artist friends of mine was like, yeah, it's like um so integral to the work for it to be open at the back. Um, because I think that is really a generous gateway the the making of the work. You can see how it comes together. It's not it's these illusions, like I want it, I want process to be able process to be visible in the making and in the presentation of the work. So um for me, I was very I was very happy with it um in terms of that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

Yes, well, this brings us also to the project that you've done a love for art, which is better to make sense of me than you. I'll see me, I see you. Um, because I feel that you've managed to compact a lot of what we've talked about in this tiny bathroom. And I was very pleased to see that you you're mentioning Ursula Le Guin's work. I've actually bought her Urs series for Christmas reading, and her words about being human resonate beautifully with your, as we discussed about your modular approach to sculpture, and also, as you described, in a way when you make a work that it's as if you're mimicking society and attempting to create a kind of precarious harmony out of inherent chaos. And you mentioned the bathroom as a space for reflection, both literal and metaphorical. And that's such an evocative idea. I wonder whether you see it as a place where the public and private selves collide, much like the fragmented reflection we see in these mirrored works.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

Definitely, definitely. Um, and yeah, thank you for that observation, those observations. Yeah, I um I definitely think so. I guess um you're testing out your public face in a private, in a private space. Um and I feel like that um that point of trans uh those trans transitory spaces are kind of have a lot of I think, yeah, like I said, I think in my exhibition text, um, it's where you can truly be yourself or you're you're kind of forced to be yourself in a in a way.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

And I I wonder whether you've expanded upon the uh the idea that you mentioned or you alluded to f earlier about the foundational shapes and your structure structures acting as caregivers. Um didn't did that come to you naturally through process, or was it something you discovered on reflection? Because I know you've alluded to your your you yourself are a mother.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

Yes, I think um I think it came through drawing, but also like, yeah, that idea of holding and being held um uh is like a strong um physical idea, but also like that um you know, kind of like being held in a spiritual sense. Um so I guess in these hanging works, there's those two shapes that literally form the basis for all the other shapes that come after it in terms of like the composition. Um, so I think that's what I was kind of talking to. Um, but I guess they're kind of portraits or like so um, you know, um I kind of I kind of um yeah, I guess somewhat autobiographical. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:25

No, I was going to I was going to fence that in a way as I'm sitting here looking at them now. Um I can definitely see that. So what about failure? How does this work for you? I mean, can we speak about the work um relation? Where when one of your pieces literally lets go of its structure, did you feel it was trying to tell you something or what what um I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 40:53

I feel like I never I wasn't I was never sure that it would not fall, but I think that um it was very dramatic.

SPEAKER_01 41:03

And um was ambitious, it was ambitious to have it installed on the mirror in Italy.

SPEAKER_00 41:11

Definitely, definitely definitely um at yeah, I think there's a sense of um drama and some some level of performativity in in the the work, but that was definitely literal. Um but I'm glad that um we were able to resolve it. Um I guess less literally but more um subtly, or I embrace failure in my practice constantly, um, in terms of like making a shape wrong or cutting it, cutting it, cutting, doing a wrong cut, or whatever it may be. I just kind of like roll with it um and make use of what's available to me, if that makes sense. It does.

SPEAKER_01 42:05

But I I and I think I also think while you I can see that that's exactly what you do, but I also get a sense of you're someone who definitely measures twice, cuts once.

SPEAKER_00 42:19

Yeah, I mean, with this working with metal, it is it is you do have to have a plan for sure.

SPEAKER_01 42:26

Yeah. So the bathroom's usually where we confront our most unfiltered selves. I know when I look in the mirror, I wonder who that old man is there. Um I wonder how how do you how do you want or imagine or or don't care your viewers to feel when looking at such fragmented reflections in in a work such as we have in we have installed here?

SPEAKER_00 42:49

Um I think it's I don't I'm not I don't I don't ever try and predetermine um someone's interpretation or how they feel when they look at one of my works. I feel like that's what is amazing about abstract art or you've done your figurative yeah, you can you yeah, that it's um it can be whatever the it can yeah, whatever it wants to be. Um but I hope that um it's an enjoyable experience.

SPEAKER_01 43:22

Um certainly is from where I'm sitting. Um look, we'll we've we're nearly finishing up, but just circling back quickly to the shape between, because I understand they're also developing a teal bronze version of the piece, which adapts its materiality and texture by incorporating details directly inspired by the spend polishing discs that you've just described that you've used while making the stainless steel version. And it's fascinating to see how these small details create such a continuity between the two iterations. While somehow highlighting the shift in material and finish. And this I think has opened up a whole nother level of process for you in relation to seria the seriality of works, which were inherently are inherently unique. And then the we can move on to some your what you've got in mind in terms of upscaling. But just about the process behind creating this bronze, this teal bronze version and how such a process is now fundamental to your practice.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

Yeah, so I guess um sometimes um I make a card a cardboard version of the full-scale work I want to make first to just detect test proportion and dimensionality and all those kind of things. But sometimes there's actually something I want to explore further um after I've made the steel work, because sometimes I just am too eager and I just get straight into the steel version. And sometimes it is quite exciting not knowing exactly what's going to happen or exactly how the forms are gonna work together or anything like that. So it's nice to have that um kind of approach where you're not where you're kind of just in the moment, you're not yet, it's um unknown. So, but for this work, I was I always have I collected all the hundreds and hundreds of teal sanding discs I used to get that mirror polish, that mirror finish on the first work. And I was kind of interested in working with this, these discs to create some kind of tech effect on an um on a another version. And I guess um that first version is quite vulnerable in a way and and fragile because of the not literally, but in my mind, with the mirror polish finish. Um and the the those the textured steel kind of um abrasive discs have this other complete energy and um history to them, um, which I was interested in exploring in the in this in a alternative version. Um so I've made that in cardboard and then spent it was like almost as laborious as the original work, um, cutting and um gluing on the um the teal discs um in that kind of pattern. Um and there, so you'll have that cast patternated. Yes. So for my all my patinas, if there is a kind of colour or pigment to the work, it's based off the original in some way or some part of the original. Like for my other bronzers, I've either used that like yeah, colour, like for the black one, I use black tissue paper. And for the kind of maroon-colored one, there was a maroon-colored box that was part of it. So this is like, yeah, the teal. And it's kind of I kind of think it would be really exciting to see it be in a garden and get all mossy and um kind of aged in that um yeah, in in an outdoor setting. Can't wait to see it.

SPEAKER_01 47:20

And so finally very briefly, will you've got your new large-scale commission works in the making. Are we are we allowed to just really quickly talk about these? I think so.

SPEAKER_00 47:34

Yeah, so these are um two new works that it's my first um kind of foray into working with sheet bronze and sheet steel together um to create different highlight, like highlighted shapes in the work. Um so yeah, these are two, like they're 2.2 meters high by a meter, just over a meter wide. Um, so they're probably the largest scale I've worked on. Um, and then they're for a lobby space. So I wanted like a sense of timelessness, or like I guess it's a point of meeting, like a a familiar a familiar um landmark.

SPEAKER_01 48:19

Um we can I wanted we can meet under the Augusta Vinor Richardson sculptures. Here. Like me wanting to bear.

SPEAKER_00 48:27

Um, yeah, I wanted to reflect the rhythms of daily life, the comings and goings of individuals and the cyclic nature of these activities with these works. But yeah, it was um it's pretty exciting working on this scale. And these are my first kind of public works, public sculptures.

SPEAKER_01 48:45

I can't wait to see them. August, thank you so much for taking part in our Love for Art project and for taking the time to do this interview. It's been such a pleasure working with you and speaking with you. We'll put this interview on our website, and I also want to say huge thanks to Alora Shibastaba for producing this project, and Monique Sprahl for researching, and of course, to Augusta's gallery, the commercial, and Amanda Rao. Goodbye, everyone, and wishing you all a cool Yule and a fabulous first, and see you next year. Thank you so much.