An amazing conversation with Bisila Noha & Simone Brewster Bisila is an artist working predominantly with clay, with a background in Translation and International Relations. She writes about ceramics, crafts, identity and design, and has a particular interest in the contributions of women of colour to the history of art and craft. Her words are a bridge bringing the past - the forgotten, the ignored, and the belittled - to the present.Bisila suggested we are joined in conversation by artist, designer & cultural change-maker Simone Brewster. Strongly grounded in craft, Simone’s practice includes painting, sculpture, jewellery and writing, Using her creative outputs as her voice, celebrating and sharing windows into varied Black female narratives and histories. The threads that flow throughout her work display a balance of function with beauty, a repurposing of the “ethnic” and the “western” and a continuous playing with scale, materiality and architectural form. LinksBisila Noha InstagramSimone Brewster InstagramBisila’s blog post about translationBisila Noha Baney clay projectNegress and MammyWoman In PartsSimone’s solo exhibitionSpirit of PlaceV&A porcelain sugar holderUrsula K le Guin, Carrier Bag Theory of FictionElizabeth Fisher's best-known work is Women's Creation: Sexual Evolution and the Shaping of Society. The 7th chapter The Carrier Bag Theory of Evolution inspired Le GuinLydia Yuknavich talking about The Carrier Back Theory of Fiction Frank Gehry, a Canadian architect, famously said, “Decoration is a sin, expression is in materials”Truth to materials - ‘A belief that the form of a work of art should be inseparably related to the material in which it is made’. Slow Motion Multi Tasking, Tim HarfordFollow Mater on InstagramThe Mater website Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I am joined by two UK-based artists Hannah Lees and May Hands. The two have recently undertaken their second collaborative project together, titled ‘Self can shade off into otherness gradually’. The project was held at VOLT gallery, run by Devonshire Collective in Eastbourne.Hannah Lees investigates ideas of cycles, constancy and mortality; the sense that things come to an end and the potential for new beginnings. This constancy, be it in religion, science, history or in organic matter, is visible in her practice through her attempts to make sense of and recognise traces of life. Traditional processes, materials and rituals are often reworked to explore how ideas and beliefs can live, die and be reborn across times and cultures.May Hands explores how our relationship with materiality shapes our understanding of the world. She documents and collects observations of the world around her through traditional craft-based techniques and the collecting and reinterpreting of objects. Reflecting upon seasonal cycles, sensuality and the inherently curated aspect of our everyday consumptions, her work questions how society constructs and articulates value and desire.LinksVolt Gallery: https://www.devonshirecollective.co.uk/about/exhibitions-at-voltDevonshire Collective: https://www.devonshirecollective.co.uk/https://www.instagram.com/devonshirecollective/Hannah and May:https://www.instagram.com/hannahjlees/https://www.instagram.com/may_hands/Collective Ending: https://www.collectivending.com/https://www.instagram.com/collectivending/Green screen refrigerator action Mark Leckey: https://markleckey.com/IMGs-2010Primitive Technology - send to May. can she share a video of the person making cordage. Funny that they are often menman on YouTube - video of him making a furnace and also cordage Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week I discuss oil paint, car wraps, spray paint, light, and painting tools with Harriet Gillett and Kate Dunn.  This conversation contains references to sexual assault.Harriet is an artist living and working in London, who works from sketches made in the moment, usually in pubs at live gigs.. Working predominantly with oil and spray paint, she layers thin veils of colour over a warm fluorescent spray paint ground. She recently finished an MA in Fine Art at City & Guilds of London art school, after previously studying English Literature. When I contacted Harriet to be a guest on the podcast, she suggested we are joined by Kate Dunn. Kate, another former C&G student who is now a fine art tutor at the university. The two met in tutorials and conversed over their shared use of spray paint..Kate Dunn studied MA Fine Art at City & Guilds of London Art School, following a classic training in Florence. Previous artworks have included UV reactive pigments, UV light, sound, pigments, spray paint and coloured pencils. Her works have been installations and experiences based around painting; working with themes such as renaissance, rave, light and sacred space. skin is a new body of work looking at themes of touch, rage, and absence. These works involve using oil paint and abrasive tools on car wrap. Car wraps are made as a temporary and alternative exterior. Created to last only a few years, the wrap is like a kind of transitionary skin. Harriet Gillett on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/harrietgillettart/Website: https://harrietgillett.co.uk/workKate Dunn on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bellissi.mama/Website: https://www.k8dunn.org/Mater on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/Website: https://mater.digital/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I am joined by the artist duo Matterlurgy to talk about Water! Matterlurgy are a research-based artist duo composed of Helena Hunter and Mark Peter Wright. Some of their projects have responded to sites such as a hydropower station, disused steelworks, a laboratory for ice simulation, an abandoned copper mine, as well as galleries and museum collections. Examining ways of sensing, translating and representing environmental change.Our conversation focused on some of their projects that surround water.. From viewing ocean water under the microscope and the invisible activity which we are unable to see through the naked eye, through to complex river ecosystems. We discussed how they use installation, sculpture and film to bring this research into gallery/museum spaces, and the mediums that enable them to share these ideas.. LinksMatterlurgy website: https://www.matterlurgy.net/projectsMatterlurgy Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matterlurgy_studio/Mark Peter Wright artist website: https://markpeterwright.net/Helena Hunter artist website: https://www.helenahunter.net/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_helena_hunter/?hl=enMIMA (Middlesbrough Museum of Modern Art): https://mima.art/The Seili project was hosted by Contemporary Art in the Archipelago: https://contemporaryartarchipelago.org/Sensitives Steam, website link: https://sensitives.stream/Arts Catylist: https://artscatalyst.org/ Flom Sang: https://www.matterlurgy.net/flom-sangMuseum of Sheffield artist's page: https://www.sheffieldmuseums.org.uk/whats-on/meet-the-artists-matterlurgy/Bakewell Old House Museum: https://www.oldhousemuseum.org.uk/Wellcome Collection: https://wellcomecollection.org/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwsc24BhDPARIsAFXqAB00eCUGltjjED65pjkD0CpUH1MnHFEyh9s57mUx30ZR0o6jikMFT9QaAj9wEALw_wcB Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A magical conversation with Emma Witter and Krista Mileva-Frank about Shells and Grottos.. I first came across Emma’s work a couple of years ago.. Emma is an artist who makes work from found and waste ephemera. Looking back at heritage craft, she combines ancient materials with relatively recent scientific processes such as electroforming and kiln forming. When I asked Emma a few months ago to be on the podcast, she wanted to take her time to pick the right guest. Which brings us to our second guest, Krista Mileva-Frank.. Krista Mileva-Frank is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art program at MIT. Her dissertation examines grottoes and rock landscapes in nineteenth-century France and Latin America in the context of environmental transformation, labor, and racial politics. Krista is the curator of the group exhibition Objects for a Heavenly Cave, on view at Marta Gallery in Los Angeles, 7-12th October.. The show features work by Emma Witter..LinksEmma: https://www.instagram.com/emma_witter_/?hl=en & http://www.emmawitter.co.uk/Krista: https://architecture.mit.edu/people/krista-mileva-frankThe Exhibition: https://marta.la/exhibitions/various-artists-objects-for-a-heavenly-cavehere is a link to the exhibition.The exhibition catalog, along with the GROTTO hat, can be purchased from the Marta Bookshop.Other artworks in the exhibition referenced:James Naish (Corycia bench)Lily Clark (superhydrophobic fountain Dew Point III)Emily Endo (scent-based piece Nymphaeum)Masaomi Yasunaga masaomi_yasunaga (Melting Vessel 熔ける器, 2024)Marta Gallery on InstagramFumi: https://galleryfumi.com/ & Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gallery_fumi/?hl=enMater on InstagramThe Mater website Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week I am in conversation with Hannah Fletcher and Steffie de Gaetano about sustainable photographic processes, soil chromatography, and wasteHannah Fletcher is an artist based in London, working with photographic processes, incorporating organic matter such as soils, algae, mushrooms and plants into photographic mediums and surfaces. I first heard of Hannah through her work as the founder of the Sustainable Darkroom, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to researching and disseminating lower-toxicity photographic materials and methods.I’m thrilled that Hannah has introduced me to our second guest Steffe De Gateano, an interdisciplinary artist and researcher currently based in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands.. Steffie’s work is situated at the intersection of architecture, landscape, art, and anthropology, disciplines she critically unbuilds by uncovering their colonial entanglements and ramifications of Modernity. Steffie’s Permeance Project uses the technique of chromatography on soils from the river Dommel, which have been contaminated by industrial waste streams. Steffie de GaetanoWebsite https://steffiedegaetano.net/about.htmlInstagram https://www.instagram.com/steffiedegaetano/Hannah Fletcherhttps://www.instagram.com/hfletch/https://www.hannahfletcher.com/Sustainable Darkroom: https://sustainabledarkroom.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The fabulous Rebecca Coleman & Nicole Seymour join me to chat about the sparkly, clingy, joyful, irritating, enchanting paradox that is glitter!A few years ago I attended a zoom lecture by Dr Rebecca Coleman about her long-term research project into glitter. A project which was initiated following a collaging workshop with young girls, organised by Coleman.. It was witnessing the allure of glitter as a material in this workshop, as well as how glitter was appearing for weeks afterwards, lingering at the bottom of a bag, or attached to belongings and clothing, that led her to follow some of these themes further..Rebecca is a professor at the school of School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies and Bristol Digital Futures Institute at the University of Bristol, with research crossing media, cultural studies and feminist theoryRebecca recommended that we invite Nicole Seymour to join us in this conversation.. Nicole works in the environmental humanities, asking how literature and other cultural forms – from documentary film to stand-up comedy – mediate our relationship to environmental crisis. Her latest book, Glitter, is an environmental-cultural history of that substance from Bloomsbury’s “Object Lessons” series. She is professor of English and graduate advisor of environmental studies at California State University at Fullerton.I am officially a mega fan of Beckie and Nicole, they are both iconic. They do such a good job of maintaining the enjoyment of glitter while taking it seriously as a subject.. I highly recommend both of their books which I will link to here:https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781912685387/glitterworlds/https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/glitter-9781501373763/More LinksRebecca Colemanhttps://journals.oslomet.no/index.php/rerm/article/view/3669https://read.dukeupress.edu/cultural-politics/article/18/1/79/298683/Glitter-Shine-GlowPatinas-of-Feminine-Achievement (I'm not sure if this is open access?)https://www.academia.edu/36834385/_Osgood_J_in_press_You_cant_separate_it_from_anything_glitters_doings_as_materialised_figurations_of_childhood_and_art_in_Sakr_and_Osgood_Eds_Post_Developmental_Approaches_to_Childhood_Art_Bloomsburyhttps://www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-press/publications/glitterworlds/Nicole SeymourA very short piece on glitter’s usage in fishing lures. https://bloomsburyliterarystudiesblog.com/2022/09/fishing-lure-glitter-environment.htmlhttps://www.dukeupress.edu/aesthetics-of-excesshttps://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/214/ShineThe-Visual-Economy-of-Light-in-AfricanAlso referenced: Kylie Crane, Plastic and ConcreteMater:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/Website: https://mater.digital/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On ochre, wild clay and foraging! This week I am joined by the magnetic pairing that is Heidi Gustafson and Belinda Blignaut. When I first came across the sculptures of the artist Belinda Blignaut I was blown away by them. Made from unprocessed clay and other found materials from her immediate surroundings, tapping into ideas around transformation. Though it took me a long time to actually reach out to Belinda and tell her what a fan I was, images of her works have been pasted on my studio wall and saved on Instagram for several years.When we spoke on the phone a few weeks ago Belinda suggested we invite Heidi Gustafson to join us in conversation today.. And I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Heidi’s work in more detail since then.. Heidi is ‘a recovering philosopher who forages and crushes rock for a living.’ Her Book of Earth is an immersive introduction into the world of ochre, a naturally occurring mineral used to make pigment. Heidi’s cabin in the rural North Cascades shelters the Ochre Sanctuary project, which contains more than 600 pigments from around the planet.. a transforming body and future earthwork made with ochres and earth pigments gathered by humans worldwide.We spoke about the body, and Belinda’s journey through health and healing. The body is central to Belinda’s work - the Mud Rights practice sees her covering her body with earth, creating an earth skin and lying down in the ground.. It is a still, meditative and contemplative experience of re-connection.Heidi spoke about the vastly broad array of colours and forms that an ochre can take, how they have been a way of understanding her connection to earth, and how ochres are connected to our bodies through our material make-up.Find Belinda & Heidi on Instagram: @belinda_blignaut  @heidilynnheidilynnFind out more about Heidi’s Ochre Sanctuary: https://earlyfutures.com/ochrearchive/Heidi’s book, Book of Earth: https://earlyfutures.com/book-of-earth/Belinda also organises the Wild Clay retreat: @wildclayretreatWe are on Instagram at @Mater________We also have a website with 19 commissioned pieces of writing which can all be read for free on our website mater.digital Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I am joined by the wonderful Nicola Turner & Mick Sheridan, speaking about sculptures, upholstery, waste, horsehair and wool..Nicola Turner: https://www.instagram.com/nicolaturner.art/?hl=enMick Sheridan: https://www.instagram.com/m.s.upholstery/?hl=enNicola is an artist with a background in set and costume design. She has designed for The Royal Opera House, National Theatre and Sydney Opera House to name a few.. Today we will be talking about her sculptures. As an artist Turner investigates dissolution of boundaries, liminal states, and continuous exchanges across ecosystems.. exploring the interconnection of life and death, human and non- human, attraction and repulsion. She combines found objects that hold traces of memory, with the shapes of living forms, and materials from organic ‘dead’ matter such as horsehair - a material used previously for bedding and furniture. Her sprawling sculpture, The Meddling Fiend, in the Royal Academy courtyard has been a highlight for many visitors to this year’s Summer Exhibition.Mick is a second generation upholsterer based in Wales, proficient in both traditional and modern methods, and specialising in British wool fabrics. Mick’s Guerilla Reupholstery project finds fly tipped or discarded furniture on the streets, and transforms them into something new.. Using as much of the existing materials as possible and augmenting that with waste products from their reupholstery business. The chairs are sculptural, several being made in collaboration with an artist, and one with a Designer/Weaver.Mick's Guerilla Upholsterer account: https://www.instagram.com/guerrilla_upholsterer/?hl=enThe Meddling Fiend at The Royal Academy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7gVTwxvhPkJulie Ann Sheridan: https://www.instagram.com/sheridanjulieann/Sadie Campbell: https://www.instagram.com/sadiedidi/Find us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/?hl=enOur website: https://mater.digital/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A fascinating conversation with Deborah Tchoudjinoff and Oscar Salguero about geology, minerals, technology and fictionDeborah is a multidisciplinary artist based in London who works across sculpture and digital media. She has worked with AR, VR, Unreal Engine, combined with sculpture made from wood or metal to present mixed media installations. Often beginning with a locality or research concept, she considers what the form is through the process of material and visual experimentations. Her practice engages with the temporal and spatial aspects of ecologies, in particular how technology, constructs, remembers, and forgets the stories of past and future ecologies. She is influenced by fiction, world-building, and otherworldly aesthetics.Oscar is an independent curator, researcher, and archivist. His exhibition NEO MINERALIA presented a selection of new geological specimens crafted by ten international artists. The exhibition suggests recent rock formations no longer fit within the traditional groups: Igneous, Metamorphic, and Sedimentary. Instead, the era of human influence on the climate and environment has introduced two post-natural rocks: Synthetic and Digital. Salguero is also the founder of Interspecies Library - the first archive dedicated to the study and advancement of artists’ books exploring alternative interspecies futures.Deborah is on Instagram at: deboraht_ffOscar is on Instagram at softcorenyFind us on Instagram at Mater________Our website it mater.digitalProjects & people referenced:The Toaster Project, Thomas Thwaites, 2011Neo Mineralia, Oscar SalgueroSae Honda, Everybody Needs a RockWorks by Deborah Tchoudjinoff Ceramic Material AtlasLehman BrothersEarth Emotions by Glenn Albrecht Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week I’m joined by Miriam Sentler and Paulina Blaesild, to speak about deep time matters, art, archeology and the act of swimmingMiriam lives and works between Norway and the Netherlands. She is a contemporary artist and doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo.. Her projects often result in long research trajectories, taking shape in different mediums like installations, audio, textile, video, photography, artist publications, and text. Sentler's interdisciplinary work emphasises the changing of landscapes, focussing on the cultural and environmental legacy of (fossil fuel) industries and the modern era.Paulina is a doctoral research fellow at the department of Historical Studies, Gothenburg University, Sweden. She is a palaeoecologist and wetland archaeologist working with vegetation development studies and artistic practice to explore past and present ecological encounters, their interconnections and the mediatory effects of technology.This discussion highlighted to me the potential within having not just conversations but also working collaborations across disciplines.. Or even non-disciplinary spaces as Paulina mentioned - where you are not restricted by certain processes.. These in-between spaces create so much room for curiosity and productive exploration. Miriam referenced the book Arts of Living on a damaged planet: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517902377/arts-of-living-on-a-damaged-planet/Find Miriam online at:www.miriamsentler.com www.deeptimeagency.com Find Paulina online at:Blaesild, P. (2024). Paulina Blaesild - Human-Environmental Interactions in Wetlands, Arkeologisk Forskningsseminar, Universitetet i Bergen (presentation, in Swedish).https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVK4_Tp6D3QKarlsson, M. (2021). Unik stenåldersmiljö grävs fram i Östergötland, Forskning och Framsteg (Interview, in Swedish). https://fof.se/artikel/2021/7/unik-stenaldersmiljo-gravs-fram-i-ostergotland/Larsdotter, A. (2021). Torvbrytning hotar fornmiljö. Populär Historia (Interview, in Swedish).https://popularhistoria.se/nyheter/torvbrytning-hotar-fornmiljo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jussi Parikka ( https://jussiparikka.net/ ) is a writer and media theorist. He is Professor of Digital Aesthetics and Culture at Aarhus University and Visiting Professor at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague as well as the Winchester School of Art. He is the author of Insect Media, A Geology of Media, What is Media Archaeology?, and Operational Images. Abelardo Gil-Fournier ( https://abelardogfournier.org/ ) is an artist and researcher. Originally trained in Physics, he holds a PhD in Arts from the Winchester School of Art (UK). His practice addresses the entwining of image surfaces with the living crust of the planet. His work encompasses different techniques, spanning from sound and video installations to computational processes such as machine learning, including assemblages where the living conflates with the animate.Together they have collaborated extensively, and their new book Living Surfaces: Images, Plants, and Environments of Media (can be found here) will be launching on 25th June. In this conversation they break down some of their thinking around the materiality of media being inherently connected to the sites they come from.. they talk about plants and living surfaces, of 'dynamic formations'. And how this book related to their practices as individuals.Link to the full text read at the beginning by Jussi Parikka, on Mater.digital: https://mater.digital/jussi-parikka/ On Abelardo Gil-Fournier’s recent solo show at the Fundacion Cerezales- https://www.artforum.com/events/juan-jose-santos-mateo-abelardo-gil-fournier-fundacion-cerezales-2024-549901/ Operational Images book- https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/operational-images Seed, Image, Ground video essay- https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/situations-post/seed-image-ground/They talk about Elemental Media through an example of: how the emergence of photography introduced the question among botonists: What if plants are somehow living photographs on their own? Other people referenced throughout the conversationsEsther Leslie, Synthetic Worlds Nicole Starosielski - https://filmmedia.berkeley.edu/people/nicole-starosielski/Giuliana Bruno - https://afvs.fas.harvard.edu/people/giuliana-brunoAnna Tsing - Patchy Anthropocene - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Efmf77F2oNMHarun Farocki - https://www.harunfarocki.de/home.htmlAnna Munster and Adriene Mackenzie On Their InvisualitiesJ R Carpenter - https://luckysoap.com/criticalwriting.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today on The Mater Podcast, we are speaking with Chris Keeve and Zayaan Khan.Chris is a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of Kentucky, their research has to do with seedkeeping, plant breeding, and agrobiodiversity conservation—the things that people do, or don’t do, with seeds.. and the things that seeds may or may not do on their own—in the face of legacies of racial capitalism in land and food systems. Their dissertation project involves participatory and collaborative work as a seed grower and organiser with multiple seed networks and seed and land justice projects in the U.S. Their work sheds light on the cooperative geographies of seed networksZayaan Khan works in food justice, land justice, and seed justice as a storyteller and transdisciplinary artist based in South Africa. Drawing inspiration from the rich biodiversity of local landscapes and the enduring relationship between people, the land, and the sea. She is also building the Seed Biblioteek, a seed library based in Cape Town, South Africa. Seh is a PhD Candidate in The Environmental Humanities South, University of Cape Town, South Africa, an interdisciplinary research cluster, focused on seed: "From seed-as-object to seed-as-relation."We speak aboutSeedworkLand reformSpiritual connection with the landThe land having a memorySouth AfricaKentuckyRematriationFind Zayaan Khan and Chris KeeveFollow us on Instagram or visit our websiteOther projects: Truelove Seeds, The Heirloom Collard Project Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.