Saudade Artists

Could you tell us why you chose to respond to collection 1.0122 and how you started to navigate the early stages of your research?

Being the curator of Saudade meant that I was in the privileged position to go through almost the entire EAC collection. It was a fascinating few days, and I realised how unusual the archive was: a collection of items and documents that, standing alone, might seem inconsequential or trivial. Yet together, in their entirety, the collections create a rich tapestry weaving hundreds of lives and cultures together, bound by both the poignancy of everyday life and the occasional adventure that comes along. Furthermore, in amongst the shopping lists and school reports are items of historical significance – otherworldly objects that have not quite found a home in the typical museum archive.

Personally, I was looking for a collection in which an object was included. I wanted to have that physical interaction with the archive: to be able to ‘hold’ the past, rather than just read about it. Collection 1.0122 is not a large collection yet it had an object, a wooden puzzle, which instantly caught my imagination. Not least because a piece from the puzzle was missing. For me, this was the ultimate invitation to engage with that particular piece.

Have you worked with archival material before and, if so, could you comment on the importance of responding to historical records within your practice?

Archival material plays a significant role in my practice. I consider visiting museums, local archives and heritage centres essential when beginning a new project. In terms of responding directly to archival material, I worked on a similar project, Archivo Ahora, in rural Spain in 2011. I selected one image, randomly, from the local municipal archives every day for four weeks. Each day I re-enacted this archival image in the present day. Local people began to help me, and the project became a mapping strategy to understand the geography and history of the area. Responding to historical records helps us, as artists, navigate the present: to connect with a wider public and become informed in our approach to materials, text and voice.

You decided to create the missing puzzle piece from the jigsaw in the collection. Could you comment on this from a conceptual point of view?

Yes, soon after choosing the collection I decided to create the missing puzzle piece. However, the materials and design of the piece came later. It was very clear to me from the beginning that the piece should join the puzzle in the archive, as a visual clue to the history of the donor. Documentation of the puzzle, incomplete and ‘complete’, would be in the suitcase but the piece itself would be packed away with the rest of the puzzle in the EAC, only accessible to those who asked to see the collection. I am interested in works that are not easily identifiable as ‘art’ but act as quiet, yet disruptive, signifiers.

In terms of the making of the object, you collaborated with goldsmith Aletta Teunen. Have you worked collaboratively before?

For me, collaboration and an interdisciplinary approach is key to a successful piece of work. The research that I conducted into Palau Kemaro Island near Palembang, where the donor grew up, revealed a conflicting identity as a place of romantic folklore and scarring industrialisation. Gold features in almost every forkloric tale connected to the island; however, the area is primarily known for its rubber and oil exports. I wanted to bring these elements together and collaborating with Aletta allowed me to do this.

The research that you have undertaken for this project has led to, potentially, creating more responses to other puzzles from the same era. Could you expand on this?

It transpired that the puzzle is part of a larger collection of puzzles and decorative menus given to passengers aboard Rotterdamsche Lloyd ships during the 1940s and 1950s. I was lucky enough to have a meeting with the director of the Koninklijke Rotterdamsche Lloyd Museum where we discussed the relationship between the shipping company and Sumatra, both historically but also in the present day. Aletta and I will now collaborate on another piece that investigates joint heritage and this will join a new collection of objects and images in Medan, Sumatra in 2018.

Are there any strategies or themes developed during the Saudade project that you are keen to take forward into future works?

Certainly, the research into the history of the Dutch East Indies is complex and fascinating and I will continue to research this alongside the themes of landscape identity.

Furthermore, from a curatorial standpoint, I feel tremendously excited and motivated to see Saudade take shape. It is my intention to curate similar projects with a variety of heritage partners in the future – continuing to shine the light into the darkest corners of archives internationally and fostering new collaborative ways of re-imagining history.

Working with the selected artists on this project has been illuminating. Their hard work and imaginative approach has allowed for rigorous debate, historic scrutiny, personal memory and beauty to sit perfectly alongside each other. The EAC and I wish the artists all the best in their future endeavours.

Could you tell us what drew you towards collection 1.0019 and how you started to navigate the early stages of your research?

I joined the EAC Archive Project only in April this year, and, after going through the different options, collection 1.0019 stood out in particular because it included digitised Super 8 films. I’ve worked with this medium before, so the decision came quite naturally. I wanted to challenge myself by making use of the Super 8 medium in a unique way.

Have you worked with archival material before and, if so, could you comment on the importance of responding to historical records within your practice?

My Master of Fine Arts degree focussed on the delicate negotiations of working with found material, so this was the first time I worked with materials and had access to their historical records. Even though it was interesting to read the backstory, I still found myself responding to the archive material in a more imaginative manner.

You chose to work with the monotype medium for The Second Day. Could you explain why you chose this technique?

I decided on the monotype medium because of its key characteristic: no two prints end up being perfectly alike, and consequently it makes editioning impossible. So too with memory; two or more accounts of a single event can never be identical, however similar the narrative may seem. The monotype process aided perfectly in producing imagery, fading from distinct to ethereal; a clear print to a ghost impression; and triggering the moment from remembering to forgetting. I could effectively make use of the ‘ghost print’, which is a print made with the remaining ink on a printing surface after a print has been pulled. It provides the basis for working up a subsequent image or it may be printed, as I did with the last image of the series, resulting in a fragile impression. This ghost print, which is often considered inferior, articulated that fragile moment of forgetting so well. It remains my favourite of the series of monoprints.

There is a subtle sense of trickery within the works; something or someone just out of reach. Could you expand a little on how you approached the themes of pace and time within the works?

I find it very interesting that you mention pace and time. Through all the tests and prints that I did in preparation for the series ‘The Second Day’, I was grappling with the static results. The more frustrated I got, the faster I worked. I realised through this process that the swifter printing gave the image an element of movement. Hence, pace and time played a true physical role in the making of this monoprint series.

Secondly, time is such a precarious theme in our everyday lives, in the memories we capture, and in the deterioration of physical photographs or Super 8 films. So it was unquestionably a relevant theme in the works Witness I & II by the very nature of the medium.

You created these works while on residency. Did being away from ‘home’ yourself inform or affect your response?

I think that whenever you are far from familiar surroundings, or if you find yourself in an unsettled moment, you have a yearning for a deeper place of stimulation. Somehow you manage to uncover a layer that you never realised existed.

To be honest, I thought that my work was done once I completed the Monotype Series. But somehow I still had an insatiable urge to work physically with the imagery and imaginatively manipulate and transform the film stills. I think that being away from home and having fewer distractions, along with a profound sense of longing, urgently prompted me to create the works Witness I & II.

Are there any strategies or themes developed during the Saudade project that you are keen to take forward into future works?

This project has unquestionably deepened my love for the monotype medium! As a result, I am in the process of working on a series of monoprints that feature figurative forms. I’ve also found a very interesting direction that came as a result of the photographic works (Witness I & II); I am working on a collaboration whereby I will be experimenting with contoured illustrated layers with film negatives, layered with portrait imagery. So yes! This project took me on an incredible journey, and I am excited for the respective routes that evolved from my participation in the Saudade project.

Could you explain what drew you towards this collection and how you started to navigate the early stages of your research?

I was first interested to find out that the donor is an anthropologist. My research has some crossover with anthropology and my aim was to find out: what does a graphic/symbol of individual essence look like when it comes from a personal archive? In the early stage of my research, I was looking for a link between the EAC and the individual soul: how can adopting a new culture and being part of history influence one’s essence? There was another collection that I was interested in, particularly to find a connection between life experiences, such as travelling back from Indonesia after the colonial time and now. Unfortunately, I was not able to meet the donor of the original collection, which is an essential element to my process. However, I found collection 1.0033 and was able to meet the donor in person and so carried on my research.

Have you worked with archival material before and if so, could you comment on the importance of responding to historical records within your practice?

I have never worked with archival material; however, the importance of the ‘archive’ is in the understanding of different experiences in different times and cultures, leading to greater awareness of global citizenship.

Your work is inspired by hidden histories that are semi-visible in the present. How has the act of stamp-making helped you communicate or explore this?

I am inspired by material and people. I do interview sessions before the stamp creation in order to capture the fundamental story. Stamp making is a process of actualising that story.

The final work, Observer, is a stamp of a fluid shape, gestural and organic. Could you explain this design and the search for ‘an essence’ you mentioned?

Observer represents ‘multi-mindset’: an ability to see the values and problems within mixed cultural contexts. The image works like a boiling cultural pot trying to understand its own experience and applying it to its surroundings.

My search for an ‘essence’ is to understand the culture and uniqueness of individuals because I think these qualities represent the world of now. I started to use a stamp to express my own graphic voice and also to use it as a tool to communicate with people. I wanted to understand people on a deeper level so I started a project to find this so-called ‘essence’ within an interview scenario. This led me to the Saudade project.

How important is the physical act of ‘stamping’ in your practice from a conceptual standpoint?

The importance is in the culture of the stamp itself, which includes the way people use it. Stamping has long been used in official documents, passports and wherever there is the need to identify an individual. There is already meaning within this: the self (or government) representation of identity and its association with object and print. My practice explores and subverts this.

Are there any strategies or themes developed during the Saudade project that you are keen to take forward into future works?

I found that creating symbolised graphics for an archive is very interesting, especially if it attempts to summarise a personal collection. It would be fascinating to continue this idea and develop an entire ‘alphabet’ of symbols for each collection in the EAC.

Could you explain what drew you towards the two collections, 1.0068 and 1.0023 and how you started to navigate the early stages of your research?

Each of these two archives preserves a record of a family’s travels, but through different means. The first archive is predominantly visual, captured through photographs and video; the other holds letters, diary entries, and other written material. In a way, each archive is somewhat blind to a portion of what the other presented: either imageless or uncaptioned. Viewing and interpreting both functioned as a kind of double vision, in which the narrative of one set could be illustrated by the unrelated photographs of the other.

The dizzying sense of inertia one gets from tracking the movements of the family from the Netherlands through to Australia and beyond blurs with, and even makes a sort of sense within, the other family’s photographs. The images of Venezuela, Qatar and Nigeria show strangely lit scenes of prizewinning orchids dramatically staged near saturated yellow window screens, brass bands leading cacophonous parades, or travellers-by-camel hesitating at the outskirts of an airport. Although the locations are different in each case, the impressions they leave are actually quite similar.

The photographs I was drawn to – landscapes in the Niger Delta from the era when the first oil pipelines were being installed – seem hallucinatory, momentary, and staid all at once. Somehow, they capture the feeling of the slow passage of time, yet also seem immobile, holding still images of construction, labour and activity.

Have you worked with archival material before and if so, could you comment on the importance of responding to historical records within your practice?

I’ve worked with archives and historical images in various ways in the past. In a short-run artist book The Right Eye, I collected sentences from an early version of the script for the 1950s noir film Sunset Boulevard. The script had been heavily edited during production. In this case, the response to the historical record was meant to take a classic piece from the film canon and catch it in the act of being indecisive, self-doubting, revisionist – and to release from the archive a stash of unperformed language.

Although the texts you responded to were in English, your role as a translator, from disjointed memories to physical object, seems key to the creation of these works. How do you approach text, sculpturally, within your practice?

A few years ago, I became quite curious about the words used for titles in satirical newspapers. In politically repressive contexts where it is difficult to speak directly or frankly, the namesakes of these newspapers act to aggravate and irk those in positions of power. They provoke tears, are sharply pointed, and after they’ve left their mark, are difficult to forget: the Hornet, the Porcupine, the Needles, the Nettle, or the Crocodile. A second genre is based on trickster figures like Lúdas Matyi and Eulenspiegel.

I found each of the items associated with these titles and placed them on a table in the gallery. Without the newspapers to contextualise them, they appeared unrelated and ordinary – a quotidian handful of trinkets. At the same time, they were free to conjure other associations and create new, unknown relationships between language and object.

To me, sculpture is always an exercise in language. When viewing art, we are always translating across (and getting tripped up by) the disjuncture from visuals to words.

Your final works, Everything Went Shimmery, are two polyester pieces with a selection of accompanying objects. In the blog post The Life of an Archival Object you describe these works as ‘nomadic’. Could you explain this further?

The works are nomadic in a very literal sense, because their routes go from country to country and city to city, to a series of exhibition spaces. Their parts are also from different origins, including the original photographs from Nigeria that were archived in The Hague: the fabric print, fuses, and electrical accessories that were from California; and a small rock I gathered from my parents’ home in Oregon.

Beyond this, I’m concerned with the archive or storage room as a photograph’s or artefact’s home country, its domestic space. Following this interpretation, an exhibition becomes foreign – a place where an object may not have the same neat and comfortable life it did in the archive. It may be dishevelled and present more poorly than when in its ‘home’. I tried to portray this in the format of the piece.

The two works for Saudade are printed on fabric and must be folded in a certain way after each time they are shown. As a result, the surface of the image will become covered in wrinkles and creased folds each time it is moved, building up a pattern of grids, lines and diagonals that resemble the architecture of the oil rigs. Over time, the images of the landscape will become cloaked by the geometric forms of the energy industry.

Are there any strategies or themes developed during the Saudade project that you are keen to take forward into future works?

Many, but it’s too early to say where they will lead.

Could you tell us what drew you towards collection 1.0070 and how you started to navigate the early stages of your research?

Initially, I was drawn to the beautiful, and often fragile, quality of the digitised 35mm film footage from the collection and the range of their content. Eventually I focused on black-and-white imagery. My early research involved spending time watching and re-watching the films provided, taking screenshots/stills and compiling and arranging the images. Partly, this was done as a way of understanding the content of the footage: breaking down each part almost into storyboards and key images. Viewing them as a stranger, I enjoyed the process of getting to know the characters and experiencing snapshots of their lives. As the project developed, it became apparent that there was far more material than I could feasibly work with and some editing would be required.

Have you worked with archival material before and, if so, could you comment on the importance of responding to historical records within your practice?

Working within archival and heritage-based projects has been central to my current practice and development. My most recent work engages with concepts of craft, material and place, motivated by an investigation into my own family heritage (researching the life of my grandfather, a fishing Ghillie in Aberdeenshire) and material culture. Through this work I feel I have established a connection with a man I have never met as well as uncovered a deeper understanding of our links to the past and our collective connections to heritage and tradition. This connection with heritage has translated into other recent projects including developing work for exhibitions, large-scale community projects and public artworks. I make people’s connections with heritage tangible through using archival material and found objects.

From a technical perspective, could you describe the process of creating A Still and Fragile Moment?

A Still and Fragile Moment was created through a variety of techniques including digital manipulation of imagery, which was applied onto slipcast ceramic forms by means of screen-printed decals. The forms themselves were cast from cameras that would have been used during the same time period. These cameras were sourced from a local market. I proceeded to make multiple-piece plaster moulds from them, which would go on to be used to slipcast the forms in coloured porcelain. These resulting forms were fired in a kiln up to 1,220 degrees Celsius. Alongside this, film stills were selected and composed on A3 sheets using Adobe Illustrator. These sheets were then used to make up the screens for printing the decals. Once complete they were applied to the surface of the slipcast camera forms and fired further to 840 degrees Celsius.

The work captures moving images and ‘stops’ them in the porcelain. Would you agree with this statement? Could you expand on the concept of pairing film footage with sculptural objects?

Although my original intention was to include moving projections of film footage onto ceramic forms directly, the use of stills became more important to the work. As previously mentioned, during my early research period I began by ‘storyboarding’ the films through the use of screenshots/stills. I came to view these stills as having their own sense of movement in the way that they were ordered and applied onto the surfaces of the forms. Applying images from different films on the same form was a way of conveying how I had viewed and organised the footage, which often jumped between different subjects. Each ‘still’ told me a story and had a rich history relating to different points in this particular expat’s life. The fact that the footage had no sound also contributed to the choice of a material that could be perceived as mute. Porcelain provides a fragile quality in its finish and it was this sense of fragility that was so captivating in the original footage.

A Still and Fragile Moment comprises 12 pieces that can be configured in two different formations. Could you explain the various installation possibilities?

The various installation possibilities allow for the work to be nomadic, adapting and changing according to its environment. While I have suggested two different formations, its configuration can vary depending on where it is based and who is installing the work. The formations I suggested, such as stacking one camera on top of the other, further reference the geophysical/geological themes that originally inspired them (including cairn formations) as well as relating to the imagery and tonal values printed on their surfaces.

Are there any strategies or themes developed during the Saudade project that you are keen to take forward into future works?

As previously mentioned, working within archival and heritage-based projects has been central to my current work and development and it is something I am keen to explore further in my practice. In particular, I will continue to use research-led strategies for my next response to archival material as well as exploring the idea of multi-generational craft and collaboration. The project has allowed me to further consider themes of memory and home.

Could you explain what drew you towards collection 1.0067 and how you started to navigate the early stages of your research?

I was instantly drawn to the children’s booklet for a few reasons – an ongoing investigation into child’s play in my practice, an interest in alternative education, de-schooling, and my own memories of being at primary school in the 1980s when the booklet was made.

I began this project by studying the booklet, translating the text as much as I could, but mainly studying the children’s drawings – reading them like a story of their experience of being in Nigeria as a child expat.

At the same time I interviewed former child expats, and people who had a strong connection with another country as a child, whether they had lived there or not. I gathered childhood stories, vivid and fragmented memories, comforting recipes etc.

Have you worked with archival material before and, if so, could you comment on the importance of responding to historical records within your practice?

My work is inspired by modernist architecture from the 1950s onwards – especially social housing and playground design, so I often refer to historical records – architectural plans, old photographs of buildings, etc. I have worked more directly with archival material for a project called Make Use, whereI collected booklets, photographs, poetry and documents to do with alternative living in the 1970s in a particular area of London. I then displayed the findings as an open resource during a residency in a local library, and for an artist-led walk, where some of the poetry was performed by the original poet. It was important and insightful to work with the archival material, especially the material that was gifted to me by former squatters and original authors. Most of the documents were photocopied booklets and DIY manuals, which would have been passed around within the squatting communities in the 1970s, but are still full of useful knowledge that relates to our current housing crisis today. It’s the intergenerational knowledge exchange that fascinated me during this project, and the sharing of the archival material was at the core of that exchange.

In your previous works, you have been concerned with ideas of community, collectives and the politics of seemingly innocent places of play and social gathering. How did these ideas feature, if at all, in the development of your project?

Playgrounds are political spaces. Play is supposed to be purely spontaneous and pleasurable, and on the child’s terms, but playgrounds are generally designed to achieve certain social, political and educational goals set by others. The adventure playground movement set out to change this but is under constant threat by property developers and councils, etc. I am interested in looking beyond these seemingly innocent places of play, as there are often underlying struggles, and this is what came up a lot while studying the children’s drawings. I could not help but think about the potential inequality, privilege, exploitation, and the political unrest going on in Nigeria at the time, and the children being part of this but not fully understanding. A former child expat I interviewed recalled her experience of this:

Though we were always confronted with gaping inequalities while we lived in Africa, this experience was the most extreme – being escorted out of one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent history while Rwandans were left to be murdered. We were taken to nearby Kenya and temporarily housed in a newly built five-star hotel in Nairobi with a swimming pool on the roof. We flinched when doors slammed, reminded of gunfire. We went on a luxury safari; I turned 10 at a hotel on the beach near Mombasa.

Your final work, Petrichor, is a large hanging piece of printed calico. Could you explain the meaning of the title and how the work was made?

Petrichor means the smell of rain after it falls onto dry soil. I chose this title because in the interviews when I asked people about what triggered their childhood memories of place: sound and scent were very important. A former child expat who lived in several African countries talked about how the smell of rain in summer always reminds her of living in Africa, and this resonated with me as a powerful trigger for a moment of contemplation after the storm.

The work was created by extracting elements of the children’s drawings from the booklet, for example hut structures, fish-like creatures, weather symbols and other architectural forms; carving repetitive patterns into the linocut shapes; and then hand-printing them onto calico fabric.

In your blog post, Triggers, you discuss the importance of sound and particularly the sound of rain. Could you expand on this in relation to your practice as a whole?

After hearing that the sound and smell of rain were both powerful triggers of memories, I started to notice that nearly every page in the booklet depicted the weather – rain, storm, lighting, bright sun, and ceiling fans cooling the hot heat. The visceral environment seemed to be important for the children to represent in their drawings.

I have not really worked with sound in my practice before but I began recording the heavy rain on the roof while making the fabric work, and then decided to record playground sounds. It was just part of the process of understanding the child’s experience, and helping to imagine the places of play and social gathering from the drawings.

Are there any strategies or themes developed during the Saudade project that you are keen to take forward into future works?

I have enjoyed learning from the children’s drawings and would like to work more directly with children to help understand wider political and social issues, through workshops and collaborative projects.