Artists in residence
Auckland Art Fair puts the spotlight on this city as a place to see the best in contemporary art from the Pacific Rim. Dionne Christian asks some of the artists what ‘place’ means to them — in particular the space they work in.
I think you want to make a studio special and you do spend a lot of time there. Shane Cotton
SHANE COTTON
Painter, based in Palmerston North, exhibiting with Michael Lett Gallery
How long have you been in this studio? I think we took it over in 2006, so 12 years. At the time, I was working at home in the lounge and it wasn’t a bad space but I just wanted to upscale everything. I wanted to have things started, like you see here, and not necessarily have to worry about taking them down and just live with them for a wee while and, to do that, you need to have lots of space.
I’ve got it set up the way I have because it gives me the best viewing position.
It used to be a plumbing warehouse and was a bit of a shell. We did quite a bit of work on it; we put in a mezzanine floor, a bookshelf, a kitchen and made it habitable. I think you want to make a studio special and you do spend a lot of time there, sometimes I’ll just come here and read a book.
You want to make it your own environment. I’ve got some personal things in here but I think the two most important things I need are books — things that I can read and things that I can look at — and music. I couldn’t have a studio if I didn’t have music.
Does your work have a specific Aotearoa New Zealand focus or is it more global in its scope? I think the things I am doing at the moment, you could take them anywhere in the world and show them and they would stand on their own merits.
There is a back story to a lot of the work but, in one sense, one doesn’t necessarily have to know the back story to appreciate the work.
On the other hand, having some idea of the back story allows you to see it with perspective and gives focus to the work. It tends to walk, I suppose, being located in a place but wanting to step out and venture outside of the location.
JESS JOHNSON
Multi-disciplinary artist, based in New York, and nominated, with Simon Ward, for this year’s Walters Prize; exhibiting with Ivan Anthony Gallery
Tell me about your studio. I live and work in New York but whenever I return home my mum [Cynthia Johnson, an accomplished quilt-maker] finds me a space in her studio to draw in. Studio space is incredibly expensive in New York and you take what you can get. So, previous studios of mine have been windowless utility cupboards in underground basements. It means I really appreciate working in Mum’s studio and having a view of Whangarei Heads. We are both very neat; we both have a lot of things but everything has its place. We like being able to shut the door on the outside world and have a very ordered environment within our studios. Ideally I like my studio to be a stripped-back, domestic environment with plants, couch, microwave and TV. If I have everything at my fingertips I have no reason to leave.
Although New York is a very stimulating place to live in, it can also be very distracting. I’m often plagued with the feeling of being on a giant hamster wheel; being constantly busy but not actually producing anything. So when I leave New York all I crave is solitude and space; environments that enable me to get really deep into my work and hear my own thoughts. My ideal studio residency would be on a hunk of rock in the middle of the ocean.
Are there other locations that influence the work you make? I think the formative experience of growing up in New Zealand was incredibly influential to the artwork I make now. The defining aspect of growing up pre-internet in a small New Zealand town was isolation. I got really accustomed to relying on myself for entertainment. Being alone, with zero distractions, is still a really comfortable state for me. Growing up in New Zealand also engendered a huge curiosity for worlds beyond my own relatively small one.
I found windows to other worlds through books and movies, and gravitated towards highly fantastic imaginary worlds that were as far removed from my reality as possible — worlds so detailed that I could lose myself in them. It follows that my art practice and collaborative work is essentially an exercise in world building. The idea of pulling a new world into existence through sheer will and an abundance of detail is still really potent to me.
You’ve done something a bit different for the Auckland Art Fair — tell me about that? I am presenting my drawings in an entirely new medium for the first time. The focus is several unique quilts made in collaboration with my mother. Growing up, I was influenced by my mother’s textile arrangements, by observing the processes of dying, cutting, arranging and piecing together material. I think this influence can be seen in my contemporary drawing practice today, which features repetitive geometries, elaborate borders, use of templates, and an affinity with traditional crafts and draughtsmanship. For the quilts, hand-drawn compositions were digitally printed on to bolts of cloth, then turned into quilts with embellished pieced borders by Mum.
I need the people that I have around me. They’re a really important part of my process. Jonny Niesche
VIRGINIA LEONARD
Sculptor and ceramic artist based in Matakana; exhibiting with Paulnache Gallery, Gisborne
Tell me about your studio and why you haveit the way you do.
It’s a big tin shed with a concrete floor, it is freezing in the winter and boiling hot in the summer. It’s huge and I share it with Olly [partner Oliver King]. My half is a ceramic studio so it houses two electric kilns, one medium and one very large. Then there is the outside space, which is a large covered area; this is where I do all my glazing and poisonous stuff — there is a lot of that. It is organised chaos. I work in a very immediate and hurried reckless manner so I don’t mind that I spill and drip and drop everything everywhere. I have work piled up on every surface; it seems to suit my practice so when I am building a work I have bits of works available and I can add them to a particular piece that I am working on at the time. There is no quiet space in my studio: I have tried to keep one corner ordered and quiet but it fills up within a couple of weeks. If I want a quiet clean space to put a work so I can spend time with it, I use Olly’s space when he is not there; his space is immaculate. How long have you been doing this work? My Masters is in painting. I came to ceramics about five years ago, so I am fairly new at this. I had an immediate response to the clay the first time I worked with it. It’s visceral, it’s very immediate and it can collapse or crack and break during a firing. I relate to the medium, my works are all about my body. I suffer from chronic pain from an accident when I was 20. So I make work about how my body is feeling on the day and the clay really responds to that — it’s very bodily and immediate. I can meld it, I can push it, I can break it and I can be really reckless with it — a bit like my body.”
JONNY NIESCHE
Painter and sculptor based in Sydney, exhibiting with Sarah Cottier Gallery
What do you have in your studio that you couldn’t work without?
Last September, I moved with three friends into a studio in Stanmore, Sydney. It’s very open-plan and we’ve got a good working setup. We can work alongside one another, ask for advice, share ideas and — in a positive way — critique each other’s work. I used to have to work by myself; I thought that was incredibly important but then I went to university in my 30s to study art — I was a bit of a late bloomer — and I started enjoying the conversations about art and the interaction. So, aside from my tools, I need the people that I have around me. They’re a really important part of my process.
Does being in a city like Sydney influence your work?
I’m not sure that it does from the point of view of Sydney giving me a sense of identity. Maybe I have a displaced sense of making work that is in a more international language rather than specific to a place. I am interested, however, in sensory phenomena, transparency, interactivity and where the viewer is involved in the act of looking. In relation to Sydney and its effects on me, I have always been deeply affected by the soft gentle hues of colour in the east while the sun is setting. I remember as a very small boy eating fish and chips with my family on the grass at Bondi Beach, watching the colours shift and change into dark. It was a magical moment for me that I still remember. I did also make a body of work which was influenced by a place that has been a major influence in my life.