Tell us about your creative process. What drives your practice?

Research drives my art practice, whether my practice takes the form of printmaking or ceramics. Bodies of work I have produced for exhibition environments are all based off highly researched concepts whether their nature is historical, scientific, or philosophical. Then the creative process is meticulously planned - a hundred photographs are taken, numerous drawings and/or plaster moulds are made before the work takes its form as a print or ceramic series, then the work might be reworked again through multiplate prints or smashing the ceramics for instance. 

I’m really not one to start anything without first researching and planning. I used to get frustrated by this and question whether this made me a true artist or not because I couldn’t just start something, but I recently learned that I am a questioner by nature – that’s just my personality type, I need all the information before I can move forward.  

You have had great commercial success through online platforms. As an emerging artist, what is your experience of the art world as a marketplace, and the ‘anti-sales’ trend of contemporary art? 

This is a really interesting point and something that I grapple with regularly. It is a really tough question for me to succinctly answer. Indeed, I’ve made art with the goal of commercial success, and I’ve made art for exhibition settings, seeking to critically engaging with the contemporary art world, with no intention to sell the work. This is why my practice is so diverse and I guess I’m still trying to work out what my thing is and what medium that is in. 

In terms of my experience with the art world as a market place, when I am sales focused (aiming to sell work through online platforms such as instagram) I end up making work that is generic and far from critically engaging. This can be seen with a series of fine line linocuts I produced at the end of 2018 of the female nude, I sold so many, but they were kind of generic and stylised and didn’t engage with a wider artistic context. It was the same thing when I started to plant succulents in my ceramics, I sold so many and they were in constant demand, but I found that I had crossed a line from fine art into home décor. 

I’m definitely most proud of the art I’ve made for exhibition settings, critically engaging with the contemporary art world and not sales focused. I’m most proud of my recent body of work Porcelain with Glaze (2019), a ceramic and performance-based work that sought to reclaim the almost inevitable smash that comes with making work out of porcelain. This work consequently saw me intentionally smash a series of ceramic vessels and I exhibited it as part of UNSW Art & Design’s 2019 Graduate Exhibition. This work earned me an HD in the class I made it for, yet not one person has asked me to buy a ceramic shard… that’s just the ‘anti-sales’ trend of contemporary art, hey.

Are there any female artists that influence you / any female printmakers that influence you? 

I love Lottie Consalvo. Her work is awesome. She is just awesome. 

I love the work of Emma Fielden and Louise Olsen too. 

Yoko Ono was a big influence on me when I became interested in performance-based work, and in terms of female printmakers, Jo Lankester was a big influence on me when I created gum-tree-like textured collagraph prints to print over my etchings in 2017.

Finally, what exciting projects are you working on at the moment? 

Right now I’m working on the online aspect of being an artist. I’m in the process of setting up a website to sell some ceramic pieces that need new homes and so that I can start making new things. I’m not too great of a photographer, but my ceramics had a little DIY photo-shoot in my apartment yesterday – just one of the many roles an emerging artist has to take on.