Artists' Artists

Jennifer Higgie: Artists’ Artists is a podcast brought to you by the National Gallery of Australia. I'm Jennifer Higgie, and over the course of this series, I'll be chatting with artists about works of art from the national collection that inspire, move, or intrigue them.

Today I'm talking with Julie Rapp, an Australian artist who was raised in the Yugambeh region of Queensland on the Gold Coast. From the mid 1970s, Julie's involvement with body art and performance expanded into photography, painting, sculpture, and video in her ongoing project, exploring representations of the body. She has 15 works in the national collection, including Persona and shadow: puberty, which is currently on display in the National Gallery Touring Exhibition. Know My Name: Australian Women Artists. Julie, thank you so much for joining me.

Julie Rrap: My pleasure.

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Jennifer: The first work you've chosen is by the Australian First Nations artist, Tracey Moffat, who was born in 1960 in Meanjin, Brisbane. First Jobs Pineapple Cannery 1978 was created in 2008 from archival pigments on rice paper with gel medium and depicts rows of workers in green and pink uniforms at a pineapple cannery.

When did you first come across Tracey Moffat's work generally, and why did you choose this work specifically?

Julie: Well, I've known Tracey's work probably from her first... exhibitions. And I've known her since that time and I regard her as a good mate. But I decided on this one because I thought it was quite a quirky group of work she did, this first jobs idea. And I guess we all can respond to that. We've all had a first job, which was usually not the job we've ended up with. Sometimes I try to send myself to sleep by going through all the jobs that I've done. So I'd be just particularly related, but more significantly, that particular work I chose from was the one in the cannery because I actually worked in that cannery.

Jennifer: Oh, amazing. You're not in the photo, are you?

Julie: No, this was when I was going to university. That cannery sticks in my memory because... It was piecework, meaning there was no union attached to that cannery. So it was a pretty kind of, Dickensian scene, if you like, because you just have to show up and hope you got some work. And you can imagine many more people more desperate than I was because I was a student. But the incredible thing about that cannery was there was just no health and safety whatsoever. And I remember when I first went there, nobody tells you much, but I just followed everybody else. And they were all putting. It's kind of pink cream on their hands and on their arms, and then you could put gloves on, and I'm like, I just copied everybody else. And then when I got into the, was put on the line for the pineapple shooting down, and our job was to dig all the kind of slightly bad bits out of the pineapple, which had been skinned obviously at that point, and that fell into a trough. And then the rest went off and were cut into slices or pieces or whatever.

But two things came out of that was one, I realised what the cream was because some of the women in the line who'd worked there for a long time basically had open weeping sores from the acid from the pineapple. So that was the first sort of horror. And the second was that the bits that we dug out of the pineapple, which were slightly bad, became pineapple juice.

Jennifer: Oh no, I'm never, I'm never drinking it again.

Julie: Anyway, it's like just a funny story connected to the fact of that cannery. When I look at those rows of women, I thought, that's a true thing. You know, that is what it was like. And there were other sections of it where we got hauled off to do other tasks. But that particular photo depicts all the women in the rows.

It's not necessarily my favourite image of hers or even that series, but, you know, she's a really, really important Indigenous artist. I know that her work's quite broad in a way, and that's what I like about it. That work is not about being Indigenous, that's just, like any human being, what are your first jobs?

I, I love her work because it's got that kind of, it's got lots of depth, it can be about many different things, and many different stories, but yeah, I chose that one just purely because it's just amusing that it happened to be one of my early jobs.

Jennifer: I'd love to hear a bit more about your thoughts more generally about Tracy Moffat's work. I mean, she's obviously a very important Australian artist. She's worked across various media over the last few decades, she's represented Australia in the Venice Biennale. What do you see as her sort of importance?

Julie: Well, I think in some ways her importance grows because there probably weren't a lot of Indigenous artists exhibiting in a contemporary sense, full stop, when she started. And she's obviously an urban Indigenous artist, unlike artists working within their kind of traditional context on land. And at that point in time, when I started working, we weren't seeing that kind of work either. That sort of came later. I was first drawn to, and probably the work she's now still most famous for, is a work from a series called Something More from 1989.

So, that's a very famous series. And the interesting thing about photography, being a photographer, or some of my work, not all of my work's photography, but artists work with series, but interestingly enough, if you ask many people about Something More, they probably could remember that image and not necessarily the others, which is always fascinating to me because particularly with Tracey's work, there's always a kind of narrative element to it. There's a kind of story unfolding. And the photos are very staged in the same way and could easily be stills from a film. And so I think she would think that herself, that in a way they all operate like that, as kind of stills from a potential film. But it certainly suggests the narrative form. So yeah, that's probably perhaps the first work of hers or first series of works that I was most aware of.

But yeah, she's a really important Australian artist and as I said earlier, in some ways her importance grows because of understanding and emphasis on Indigenous art generally in Australia. And she was really at the forefront of all of that. But I think it's broader than that. I think she touches upon the human condition that means we all can relate to that, regardless of whether we're Indigenous or not. So yeah, she's a really, really important artist.

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Jennifer: Another artist who works with photography is the Australian artist Sol Wiener, who was born in 1961. And for your second choice, you've chosen his photograph, Mother and Daughter, which was created in 1985. And it's quite an eerie photograph. It's black and white, it's just under half a metre tall. And even though it just says mother and daughter in the title, there are actually three women in the composition. What is it about this artwork that drew you to it?

Julie: You know, it was interesting when I was asked to look through the collection because there's plenty of works I could have chosen that I love as well. I don't know Sol Wiener’s work at all, I've never heard of him. I still haven't heard of him, except now I have, because I found it in the collection.

I intentionally haven't looked up anything because I just felt I wanted to choose something that I responded to very naturally and viscerally without having any background, very different to Tracey whose work I know intimately and I've seen a lot of. I don't even know if Sol Wiener is still practising as a photographer.

I have no idea because that photo is from 1985 so quite a long time ago now. It's an interesting one to choose. It reminded me, you know, of other kinds of practices in its kind of strange, surreal, uncanny quality. As you said, it's called Mother and Daughter, but there's three figures. So it's quite mysterious and there's some of the other photos from that series, also black and white, were also very surreal. And he obviously might've done a bit of double exposure or whatever, I don't know. It has that kind of slightly Diane Arbus sort of quality and I'm sort of a little bit intrigued to know more about him, which I guess one of the things about looking into a collection is that it whets your appetite to find out more, and it's also nice to think that an image lives outside its time, and even whether that photographer or artist is even working anymore, or frankly is even still alive.

And I like the fact that an image can jump out of a massive images like that and stay with you. There's a kind of narrative intention there, completely different to how I work. I'm not at all interested in narrative in my own practice, but many photographers are interested in it because photography, as soon as you have a series, you have a kind of narrative, and I guess his work certainly has that, because as I say, there was another really strange one of he and his father. Photography's kind of a, it tells the truth and it also lies at the same time, which is why it's a very intriguing medium. Just through lighting and maybe a little bit of manipulation with double exposure or whatever, he's created a sort of very uncanny image. Because it's a photograph we want to make it sit in the real, but in actual fact, it's surreal.

Jennifer: Is surrealism something that has influenced your own practice?

Julie: Well, people often write about my practice in that context. And interestingly, I'm working with the writer Drusilla Modjeska at the moment, who's writing a new book about Claude Cahun and a number of other Surrealist women artists from the past. We've been able to find lots of images of mine that in a way would work within that Surrealist register if you like. I can't be a Surrealist because it's a movement from many moons ago. But I guess photography, you know, you thought about someone like Magritte for example you would go, he'd be a photographer now because photography lends itself to those illusions. So it does interest me. I think, as I say, photography broadly probably can work with that sort of language of surrealism quite easily.

Jennifer: I mean it's interesting that this work was made in 1985. And sometimes works that are made in a very specific time are very much of their time, and other works transcend their time and become timeless. Do you think that this work is dated or do you think it does have a timeless quality to it?

Julie: I don't think it's, I'd say dated because you could probably have a young photographer working in that mode today. Black and white. I teach and run an art school and we have a massive analogue darkroom that students love using. So, old techniques don't go away. So that, that part of it always can be made fresh as it were. But I guess the subject matter is pretty,universal. I wouldn't regard it as documentary photography. Oh, it's just, it's recording people in that way, but it's obviously trying to bring in, as we said, this kind of surrealist edge.

So it does belong in a time, I think, of thinking in terms of photography, of not just using photography as the truth speaking medium. But on the other hand, because I think of the subject matter, it's fairly timeless.

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Jennifer: For the next work that you've chosen, we're moving from photography to a really extraordinary abstract painting by the Australian Pintupi artist, Yukultji Napangati, who was born in 1969 in Lake Mackay in the Northern Territory, Western Australia. And her painting, Untitled, was created in 2006, and it's a large square work made out of synthetic polymer paint on canvas. And it's intricate, shimmering tones of yellow and orange, a beautifully hypnotic painting. When did you first come across this artwork?

Julie: What I loved about, and I'm sure it's a kind of regional thing, the Pintupi people paint in this particular way, always when I go to shows of Indigenous art, I'm always drawn to that particular way of painting. And what's interesting is you use the word abstract, and of course it is abstract. But then is it abstract? That's our language. And so I try to kind of view it outside that lens of how I would look at it with a Western eye. And I do see it as quite performative. I think their work is quite performative in a particular way because they're mark making and they're transcribing something which is an experience of their landscape onto a two dimensional surface.

And when I look at those particular groups of paintings, from that region, I just find they're just so energetic at a kind of movement level, because there's, they're done by hand and there's no straight lines really. But when you first look at it, you feel like it's much more gridded up, but it's not. And there's something about that, I think that I have to try and think around that lens of abstraction and the history of abstraction within Western art, and try and in a way, just feel that painting and not try and analyse that painting.

But I guess I chose these ones because it's a kind of energetic response to it, would be the only way I could really frame it.

Jennifer: I think it's interesting what you say about, you know, the word abstract, which of course is a very complicated word because it's used in a very specific way in the history of Western painting. And of course, for the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, a painting will represent deep knowledge and a mapping of the land and a kind of knowledge that we don't necessarily have access to. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the different levels that a painting can operate on.

Julie: From my background, I can only almost take it at surface values. My way of entering that is, I mean, you know, I could go and read up about what they are trying to make or what the painting addresses, but I do often try to just look at them outside of that framework in a way. So it's not didactic for me. And sometimes with painting like that, I mean this is just how I operate is, I imagine if I was painting it, the kind of movement of the hand and the kind of intention and I don't know if this is true or not, but I imagine if it is a sort of mapping, it's a kind of translation between a three dimensional physical world translated onto a two dimensional surface. But that's a kind of mind transfer in a way, which is really interesting. And then you're applying it by hand. So, is it like a kind of writing form? You know, if you imagine we were writing in a kind of Western sense of writing, you're writing a word, but as you're writing it, a story's unfolding. And so I see it like that, so I often look at those paintings quite up close, like that distant perspective, which is the kind of over, the washing of it over you, the kind of movement that you have to step back to see the flow, because it's often very subtle.

It almost looks like they are very abstract in that sense. And then you step away and you see these rhythms in it. And then when you go up close and you, you know, I sometimes do that. I imagine if I was painting, making that line, yeah, I mean, that's, I can only really, I guess describe my own experience of how I look at a painting like that.

Jennifer: It's a very just physically beautiful painting. It's very rhythmic. There are these warm, pulsating colours. And do you ever use art as a sort of form of solace? To look at a painting, to calm down, to meditate, to find a place of calm?

Julie: I don’t often go to art to find that. I o ften go to art to surprise me, challenge me and so on. But with those paintings, not that they're not unchallenging, but because I think, as I said, I approach them more as a kind of performative physical space. Which you can do with a painting, because it is performance acting. It's done by hand, there's a body involved doing it. I think I'm more drawn to that particular sort of region of Indigenous painting because I think it does let me stand still and watch, and whether, I don't know if it calms me down, but it certainly places me in a still space which doesn't mean other painting wouldn't do that for me. I think painting is an interesting medium in that it's physical and it probably does ask us to stand still in front of it. More than a photograph, I mean a photograph can intrigue us, but I often think a photograph makes us go in search of information. It's an info medium because, you know, it's predominantly used in the world in that function, where I guess for me a painting does provide that other space for me, depending on the nature of the painting.

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Jennifer: Your fourth and final choice is definitely something entirely different. It's the opposite, exactly. And this work is called, wonderfully titled, TITTIPUSSIDAD from 2018 by the British artist Sarah Lucas, who was born in 1962. And she created her sculpture out of bronze, concrete, and cast iron. And it's a chair with a very sort of distorted bronze body lying over it that looks as if it's been maybe cast from balloons. So it's a very irreverent, wildly funny and strange work. When did you first come across this artwork?

[00:20:46] Julie: I've known of Sarah Lucas's work for many, many years. She is one of my most favourite female artists and partly because I just have a strong connection through my own practice to that type of work. I fell upon her work, I can't even remember when it was, but it was like the ones with the photo with her sitting back with the fried eggs on her breasts and one with the chicken open between her legs. And I guess because I try to not use ha ha humour, but to use humour and irony and parody in my own practice while trying to say something quite political about, obviously, women's positions in the world, etc., etc. And so I think I was very drawn to that immediately because, yes, it made me laugh, but it made me go, ooh, that's cutting through in a really straight arrow sort of way. And so I just was completely drawn to her practice. And then the other thing that I loved about it was she just lays a hand on all sorts of materials.

And that's definitely something I've always worked with. I mean, I've worked with bronze since, I don't know, the 2000s or something when everyone said, why are you using that material? That crappy old material that's loaded with classical references. And I'm like, that's why I'm using it. Cause it's a fantastic material to pull apart in that sense and to make people think about it as a material again, but also quite obviously her use of the body and casting of the body is completely exactly where I am coming from. In fact, her work is just a natural fit for me. I love it. And I just think she's quite courageous. Like she's really out there, but she's got a very fine aesthetic at the same time. And that obviously doesn't appeal — I know people who can't stand her work because they find it really affronting and confronting. But I don't, I just, I see a humour in it and I see a kind of playfulness as well. Like she's a trickster. And I often describe myself as that within art and I like the fact she roams where she wants to and there's a kind of sense of freedom and spiritedness to her practice that I really love.

Jennifer: I mean, as you mentioned, there are correlations between your work and her work, and obviously humour is a very strong connection. And I'd love to hear more from you about what you think is the revolutionary power of like humour in contemporary art.

Julie: Well, I think it's unguarded, you know, people could find themselves laughing at something. And then they're like, why am I? You know, like it's a sort of, it's a great opener in a sense. And it puts people at ease in a way, because they've got a way to approach a work in a sense might be actually having quite a sort of hefty punch behind it.

I'm a feminist. I've worked in that space for a long time. At the same time, I'm not only that. But I think when you want to talk about things that are tricky in lots of ways, there's a lot of different approaches to it. I always knew that I wanted to speak into that space. But I didn't want to feel like I was giving people a lesson of a way to be, or to be too didactic about it. And I think that irony, parody, humour, whatever, is a fantastic way to still make a strong statement, but come at it from another angle where people can get something from it. But at the same time, you know, be aware that I'm, you know, as Sarah Lucas is, is trying to make quite a strong point. And I guess women and humour hasn't always been put together either, just generally speaking. And why is that? You know, it's kind of a curious thing. I think that's also part of it, that there's no reason why women aren't just as good at using irony and humour as a way to speak to these more political issues. I mean, it's not like, you know, you make a decision; Oh, I'm going to make a funny artwork. It's more, I think it's a way you are yourself. I like to think I've got a pretty good sense of humour. I'm sure she probably has too, I’ve never met her, but it's kind of being playful, I guess, and using mischief in an interesting way.

Like years ago, I did a work or a series of works under the title Thief's Journal, which I ripped off from Jean Genet, but I kind of loved his idea of the thief breaking into someone's house, but actually not taking anything, just roaming around. And it was the kind of occupancy which was what that person took away. And I always thought I wander around in art history like that. I come in, I'm a thief because I haven't been invited, for most centuries. And I wander around, I take what I like in my sense of not physically taking it. And then I go away and I remake it in another way. So I create a kind of alternate to that.

Jennifer: You mentioned that this work makes a strong point. What do you think that point is?

Julie: I think it's in the representation of the female body because obviously there's a whole lot of associations. Like a lot of her work, it's over an abundance of tits. It's kind of excessive. And I think it's a very scary thing, the idea of the excessive woman. I think she goes right to that space, and so she multiplies breasts. The body's kind of intertwined, I think in this case it's through a chair. So, you know, it's not lying there passive.

It's sort of disturbing at the same time as it's funny. And I think she puts those two things together very well. Also, so we kind of laugh at it because it's odd and then we're going, but what are we really looking at here? What is this female body doing, you know? And so I like all, I like those sort of disruptions to the general flow, if you like, of how women's bodies have tended to be depicted in the history of Western art within that Western context. They're either very passive or they're romantic or sensuous or whatever, but they're not often disturbing. I mean, there's obviously, there are works in which women's bodies, I'm thinking of Gustave Courbet's L'Origine du Monde and so on, which I think I've referenced, I made a big neon work out of it.

So there are disturbing works, but then, there's something very different when it's a woman who decides to own that space. I think that's a very different position to take. And it is an astonishing fact to think that when Gombrich did the story of art in 1950, whenever it was, it had not one woman artist in it. And then it took 1996 to have one. I guess I'm a little bit older than Sarah Lucas, but I think we're still within a generation where we still have to, I mean, I have young women students still needing to do that kind of work. You know, it doesn't go away in a sense. It's still, you're against a very big force in society that wants just to pick women in certain ways. And so it's always unfinished business. And so I think as a kind of offering back to art history, it's good to have women like Sarah Lucas coming in and making work that has a kind of light touch. But it comes with a heavy message, and I think that's a really good blend.

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Jennifer: So my final question for you today is, in what ways do these works by Tracey Moffat, Sol Wiener, Yukultji Napangati, and Sarah Lucas resonate with your own artistic practice?

Julie: Well some, as we just discussed, like Sarah Lucas, on the same page, you know, I'd see that as a kind of a mate in art and I think Tracey's work also because I strongly respond to her themes and she's an Indigenous artist from Australia so that's a very important thing.The same with the other Indigenous work, it's not work I would make. But that's a great thing. I love to look at things that I wouldn't be making. Then I go on a different sort of journey, if you like. And I guess the Sol Wiener was just this stray work that I fell upon. And I thought, Oh, now I know who that photographer is. I know that name now. And I probably will look up and see more work. What is he doing today, etc. So that was the sort of unknown and the others…One was just this beautiful visceral thing to do with painting from a region, Indigenous region, that I have always loved when I go and look at those shows. And I guess I'd like to see the other two as my women in arms, creating…I guess throwing things back into art history and blowing it up a bit in certain parts and bringing fresh stories to it.

Jennifer: Julie, thank you so much for joining me. I've so enjoyed our conversation.

Julie: Thank you. Good questions too.

Jennifer Higgie: Artists’ Artists is a podcast brought to you by the National Gallery of Australia. I'm Jennifer Higgie, and over the course of the series, I'll be chatting with artists about works of art from the national collection that inspire, move, or intrigue them.

Today we're talking with Danie Mellor, an Australian artist of Najon and Mamu heritage who was born in 1971 and lives in Bowral on Gundungurra Country. There are 33 works by him in the national collection. Danie works across various media, re-evaluating, in his words, iconic landscape traditions informed by his connection to place, through his Aboriginal heritage. Danie, thanks so much for joining me.

Danie Mellor: That's a pleasure, Jennifer, and thank you for that introduction.

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Jennifer: The first work of art you've chosen is by the Australian Kuninjku artist John Mawurndjul, who was born in 1952. At almost two metres tall, Rainbow Serpent's antilopine kangaroo was created in 1991 from natural earth pigments and binder on eucalyptus bark and is braced with wood and natural fibre string. Danie, could you describe the work for our listeners? What does it actually look like?

Danie: At around two metres, it's an imposing bark or a rarrk painting. And what struck me about this work in particular was both its scale, but also the intricacy and vibrancy of the artwork itself. I found it fascinating to be looking at something which had this almost obsessive detail and there are various kinds of comparisons you can draw across all art traditions where artists are so engaged with that minutiae of detail and telling a story through each footprint of their paintbrush or pencil or whatever medium they're working with. But this one, towering as it is for a bark painting, has quite an intense vibrancy to the colour, even though they're very earthy. So this is another thing that really attracted me to this piece, is the way the work describes in a really congruent sort of way, just that mystery of the story, but also connects it back in a very powerful way as well to country and landscape.

We have a sense as viewers that in fact we're looking at something that came from the earth as well as from the artist's imagination, and from that community's storytelling around the understanding of creation, around their understanding and relationship with country and landscapes. My understanding with these bark paintings is that they come entirely from country, so the materials are derived from the landscape around the artist. I understand as well that John Mawurndjul introduced PVA, or an archival PVA, to actually I think it would have strengthened, or if you like, given some sort of archival longevity to the material and the fragile nature of the ochres that he was painting with.

Because bark paintings and these kinds of ceremonial paintings were not meant to be objects or images that lasted. They were ceremonial, they were used for storytelling, perhaps for education, but in that sense they were... Not temporary, but short lived compared to, you know, some of the things that are used now and kept and stored in museums and institutional archives.

Jennifer: Can you remember when you first came across John Mawurndjul's work, and what your response to it was at first sighting?

Danie: I recall seeing paintings by him when I was an art student at the Canberra School of Art at the ANU. And this was in the early 90s. And a lot of my first encounters with some of these really quite significant and important artworks came about through visits to the National Gallery. It was really quite interesting for me as a young artist to begin to trace relationships that were perhaps not so obvious between work that came from remote communities and was held in the same institution and the same collection as other works that were perhaps more internationally or informed by different kinds of cultural contexts. At that stage there was a fairly clear delineation, geographically and culturally, between works that were displayed at the National Gallery and other galleries too, I should add. So the conversation between works such as this and other pieces is more of a recent kind of thing where I think it's really amazing to begin considering that artists' voices, not just their work, but their voices over time, are now in conversation with each other.

Jennifer: And how do you think that experience of first seeing this work impacted on your own creative development?

Danie: It's interesting, I found that a lot of work that impacted me deeply didn't necessarily have the kind of impact where it shows itself readily in my work. I found that it seemed to have, almost like a... an invisible or intangible impact, which I couldn't quite read or make sense of at the time. So, what seemed important about the work at the time kind of got held in a memory and over time I began to realise that in some elements of my work it mirrored not particularly in form but perhaps either in gesture or intent that there was a connection that I could perhaps more personally realise and understand that actually it was seeing this work 20 or 30 years ago.

Jennifer: You've written, what is especially hypnotic about Mawurndjul's bark paintings is the rhythm and metre of the imagery, its symphony and song. And you've drawn a comparison between his work and that of Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, so artists who lived on the other side of the world many decades earlier, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, if you could elaborate.

Danie: When I look at works like this, I'm conscious that there is a particular kind of formal evaluation which includes movement and rhythm, in this case the movement of the forms in the work, but also the rhythm of the way medium is applied and the intervals between certain things and the spaces that are actually left. And as part of this ceremony of painting, there would also be accompanied by song and a remembrance of the legend and the oral history. So, there's a multifaceted kind of approach to creation. What I found very interesting about that period of European modernism where Klee and Kandinsky were active, there was like a move to give form to the expression of music through painting. And that in a sense was a visceral or bodily kind of response. It was an imaginative and perhaps almost spiritual way of showing that form and how the world might appear with colour, with shape, with abstraction because it dealt with intangibles. There was a recognition of the immaterial.

And so even though it is a sort of a stretch comparison across time and space or time and culture, there are these things that artists work with and it seems that we have a lot of things in common, even though that we're working in different times. I kind of regard artists in the collection and artists working now and artists who have come before us as colleagues in a way.

Jennifer: In a way, you might have answered my next question, which is, you know, this was a painting that was made 32 years ago. How do you interpret the contemporary relevance of this work?

Danie: Relevance is always a very interesting question and thing to consider. This would have been an extremely exciting time. I think to begin to see work coming from communities and artists such as John, where it's almost like outlier forms of painting and really exciting approaches to relaying cultural narrative and story would have first entered collections or become a more considered part of them.

And to begin thinking at the time it was acquired, how it then developed a conversation with other works, and to consider also if curators and audiences actually had a well developed enough visual language or way of talking about the relationships between works, to begin that process of connecting it to the whole of the collection. And it's an ongoing discussion because there are new discoveries and new kinds of things to realise about artworks. They have a particular way of living through time and they bring up different things. I see them as having a very important signature at the moment they are brought into the Gallery, but then they have a life beyond that initial introduction, both to works around them and also to audiences.

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Jennifer: Well that's probably a good point to move on to your second work of art. It's a small oil painting, Boy and the moon, which was created between 1939 and 1940 by the Australian artist Sidney Nolan, who was born in 1917 and died in 1992. And it's a really deceptively simple image, a stylised ochre yellow head and neck against a dark background. When did you first come across this artwork?

Danie: I saw this artwork quite early on in my career as well. It was an interesting kind of encounter because in a way, I'd seen a picture of it in a book first, and so there's a sort of mythology that builds up in one's head about, well, what's this work going to be like and how will it sort of reveal itself to me and how will it impact? And it's, as you say, it's a very deceptively simple painting, but at the same time, the materiality of the work, like a lot of Nolan's images and paintings, is very engaging. The way he uses brushes, the way he brings washes and puts down his paint and medium and uses oil paint in general is very interesting.

Sometimes it's quite scrubby and at other times it's quite refined. But there's this whole variation of marks and shade and tone and wash that exists on a continuum between those two things. And I find it fascinating the way that he has an urgency in his storytelling and narration, which is quite obvious in a lot of works. But in this one, it's more quiet and contemplative. I found that very interesting. Quite often his work is filled with gesture, and filled with you know, the artist's voice of urgently telling a story. And I'm thinking of his Kelly series in particular. And I really enjoy the way it's quietly reflective and the fact that he talks about it as a silhouette of his friend against the moon or against the night sky is a beautiful pathway to almost an intimate moment where he has a realisation of something and quickly puts it down and artists may have those sort of instinctual flashes and think right, I've got to put this down or explore this or tuck it away for a later exploration, but in a way, it's sort of like a, it's a reverse silhouette because the silhouette in this case is the illumined sort of yellow of the moon.

Jennifer: When Sidney Nolan painted this, he was a young man, he was around 22. Australia had just entered the war. And of course, Sidney Nolan went on to become one of the best known Australian artists in the 20th century. What's your take on his life and work?

Danie: The importance of Nolan's work within the Australian landscape of art history at the time, it was a really important moment for the country in terms of its modernism and the way that artists began to explore that. So I'm thinking of Nolan, but also his very close friend and colleague, Arthur Boyd, and to some extent, Clifton Pugh, perhaps I should mention Drysdale, of course, as well. And, you know, there are other female artists who begin to play an important role here, but Nolan, Boyd and their colleagues, that group, the Angry Penguins, really began to sort of shift things around at that time in Australia in quite a remarkable way.

I always look back and think, well, it's really interesting to consider the way that these artists were innovating and what were people or artists thinking about the work of First Nations artists and Aboriginal people and they were landscape painters and artists and establishing their own voice, but what was their awareness of Aboriginal art, and those kind of profound relationships with country that communities and artists from those places had as well.

And so I wonder as artists kind of how they felt, sometimes in that space, exploring and doing the things they did with relative, you know, freedom and being able to develop a story around the landscape and understanding in their own way. When we think of Nolan's work around the Kelly Gang, it's fascinating as well. He's building a myth that has its layers within, I guess, Western contextual history on the landscape of Australia. Sid Nolan had a particular way, I thought, of entering into some of those intangible elements or stories that were often embedded in landscape and bringing them to life in a way with his own kind of overlay of story and narrative and tackled in some senses some of those big questions that non Indigenous artists at the time were perhaps asking about the landscape around them.

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Jennifer: I think that’s a really good point to segway into the next work that you've chosen which is a small landscape work on paper, Shoalhaven Gorge from 1953, which was created by the Australian artist Margaret Preston who was born in 1875 and died in 1963. And in terms of what you're talking about, the intersection of Aboriginal languages and Western languages, this is something that Margaret Preston is trying to explore to varying degrees in this work. And in a way, she's trying to combine an Aboriginal approach to the landscape with a Western style, but of course, this is a very controversial approach. It's been read variously as an acknowledgement of First Nations art, but also as rather thoughtless appropriation of it. What's your reading?

Danie: I agree with both and in some ways an intellectual position around either of those kind of negates the other. But actually I think they both exist and so this is part of the complication of reading Preston's work and encountering and understanding it. Margaret Preston, I see her as a remarkable artist in the sense of scope of her ambition, what she was trying to do. The way she went about it, her work was acknowledged very early on as being of some significance and relevance. And this happened, I think it was 1923 in London at an exhibition of Australian artists' work. And the exhibition was generally not well received. Most of the work was seen as somewhat derivative, but actually Margaret Preston's work and interestingly Thea Proctor's work were singled out as being quite original and dynamic and offering something new that wasn't sort of bound up in the tradition.

And her approach in terms of actually bringing about this national language or identity as she was so determined through her work, I tend to see it as a heartfelt position. Misguided as perhaps looking back, we can now see that it was. In some ways, it was of her time. And so I tend to bring a degree of tolerance into the way I look at what she was doing. From our vantage point now, we understand some of those, if you like, incursions into cultural appropriations were deeply inappropriate. But looking at the visual language and the way she began to try and bring things together was, it was almost like a research exercise on her part. I find her work very interesting as well because she and I have been to some of the same places. I mean, I'm within a stone's throw of the Shoal Haven, where this painting sort of derives from. And so I felt a connection in that sense, but her attempts, if you like, and that controversy around appropriation really missed something. And that was the relationship with people. I felt having, you know, sort of read and researched over years that there was a really enthusiastic engagement, if you like, or involvement and appreciation of the way First Nations artists were dealing with image, with form, with material, with medium. And it always seemed to be based on an appreciation of the work and the style and their approach rather than an engagement with people.

And this comes back to the really important thing of relationship. I was often asked in the time that I was lecturing by students of, well, you know, we're really interested in Aboriginal art and want somehow to explore it. So how do we actually do that? And I said, well, firstly, you need to ask what's the reasoning behind this, and often it's not what, it's how. So the process of actually bringing that into the own space of your work is very dependent on relationship and talking. And that needs to happen with Aboriginal artists or communities. And in Preston's time, perhaps that wasn't even something that was considered. It was, I think in some ways, not a blind incursion into it, but a…almost like a journey into that space where it was blinkered. Basically, there just weren't the kinds of cultural lenses in place where she would have an understanding or artists and audiences had an understanding that, in fact, this is a ground or a cultural landscape that needs to be approached with a very different set of parameters around understanding, around discussion and insight into the relationships people had with the land and which Preston in a way derived some of her forms from.

Jennifer: Given that this work was made in the 1950s and our reading of it now, more than 60 years later is very different, have the complexities that are embodied in a way in this work of art, have they impacted on your own art making, given your own exploration of landscape within Australian history?

Danie: It was perhaps more about the process of thinking and awareness on her part that gave rise to those works and which influenced me when I began to understand more of the complexity of Preston's work and some of the issues surrounding the way that she was painting and talking about an Aboriginal landscape, for instance, or an Aboriginal still life.

It actually helped me understand how to begin moving my own sense of evaluation and analysis into areas where I had an appreciation then, perhaps, of cultural boundaries. And what it was about that process of creating and making, that artists now almost need to have in mind. It adds an extra layer of consideration and complexity. But those layers are things which make a work richer.

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Jennifer: The final work that you've chosen is also an exploration of landscape and history, but it's on the other side of the world, in Germany, and the work is Abendland, or Twilight of the West, by the German artist Anselm Kiefer, who was born in 1945, obviously a very significant date for Germany. Created in 1989, and it's an enormous work, it's almost 4 by 4 metres and it weighs over 300 kilos. It was created from a mix of synthetic polymer paint, lead, ash, plaster, cement, earth and varnish on canvas and wood. Danie, when did you first come across this artwork and what was it about it that held your attention?

Danie: Again, student days. And it was one of the first works that I stopped in front of, and it held me spellbound. If there was ever a moment where you could sort of quote Burke and the Sublime, that was it. It was, it was almost like a moment where speech and thinking... had no place. It was a moment for a young artist, as I was then, of sort of profound silence and realisation that art could convey incredibly powerful, significant messages without the need for verbal communication.

So this in a sense was a work for me by Kiefer summarised in a lot of ways the work of his career. There are different layers of history in that there's a sense of the sublime and spirituality. But there's also a strong sense, too, of a story being shown or revealed, or perhaps even concealed by that drape, by that curtain of lead that almost shuts us off from two thirds of the painting.

So it struck me as being this, ironically, a veil of some sort, and a veil that was almost placed in front of our eyes over a scene, railroad tracks that we connect. Now with the Holocaust and with that horrific event and chapter in recent history, I find it very interesting that Kiefer, as an artist, was quite prepared to explore that particular element of German history, which was very recent for him, and very recent for Germany when his work was shown at the Venice Biennale. And, you know, he was accused of supporting that particular form of Nazism. And because of the work that he was doing, it was very controversial and very raw at the time. And so, Kiefer's work brings together a lot of historical complications, but he does it in such a way that it's sort of foregrounded by a really fascinating history as well of German romanticism, where he's talking not simply about a visible world, but the experience of the artist, of the world around him, and how then to convey the intangible as a material thing.

Jennifer: You mentioned politics and political readings of this work, but you know this is a work that is dealing with a sort of mix of abstraction and figuration. We can see the train tracks and we can literally feel or see the weight of this image. What is your reading of the politics inherent in this picture? Or is it even right to ask about politics in a picture?

Danie: In some ways, reading those political layers in an artwork can often preempt the artist's intent or their position. I tend to see the artist's job as exploring and making work about those difficult chapters that humanity has found itself passing through or experiencing. And quite often, it is with a retrospective look back at that time. For Kiefer, it was very recent. Without sort of understanding his own personal reasons or his own personal politics, it becomes an important, almost like a message that conveys, actually, these are some things that are worth thinking, considering, and remembering. And works such as this do it. You make the very interesting observation, Jennifer, of the weight of the painting. I'd also say that has a symbolic weight. It's that symbolic weight of history. And you know, the heaviness, and the sadness, and the poignancy.

Jennifer: And would you say that that continues to make this painting very relevant to, say, contemporary politics and contemporary history?

Danie: Yes, and this is a really interesting thing about paintings or works of art that have a particular significance, you know, in the discussion or making at a particular point of time, while the form has a very significant and specific temporal relevance. Because they have power and quality and deal often with timeless issues. They are in a sense that the things that they're dealing with are transportable. So it tends to be that these things repeat in human history, and so they are always relevant.

Jennifer: In what way do these very disparate works by John Mawurndjul and Sidney Nolan, Margaret Preston and Anselm Kiefer resonate with your own artistic practice?

Danie: They take a closer look at the world. And, they all, as artists, there's an archaeology about the way they're looking, about the way they're thinking, and retelling. So all the work of these artists occupies a particular space, I felt, both culturally, but also in their emotional and intellectual investigation. And for me, that was what made these works significant and have a certain resonance and power that I hope is seen and felt by audiences as well.

Jennifer: Danie, thank you so much for joining me. This has been absolutely fascinating.

Danie: Thanks Jennifer, that was great.

Jennifer Higgie: Artists’ Artists is a podcast brought to you by the National Gallery of Australia. I'm Jennifer Higgie, and over the course of the series, I'll be chatting with artists about works of art from the national collection that inspire, move, or intrigue them.

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Bridget Riley is one of the most innovative and radical painters of the modern period. Born in London in 1931, she still lives in the city. In her 1996 essay, Painting Now, she declared that painting without its problems can no longer be painting, it depends upon them for its existence. The National Gallery of Australia has 15 works of art by Riley in its collection, including a new acquisition, Dancing to the Music of Time, from 2022.

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The first work you have chosen to talk about today is by the Australian artist, Howard Taylor, who lived from 1918 to 2001. He created No horizon in 1994 from synthetic polymer paint on marine plywood. It’s a curved piece, entirely white, and is just shy of two metres in height. When did you first come across this artist?

Bridget Riley: It was during a visit that I made in the late 70s to Australia. It was planned that I should have an exhibition at the new art gallery in Perth. I was very keen to go and look as I have always been very anxious that my work is presented so people can enjoy looking at it, and it is that experience of enjoyment of looking and seeing, that is the bridge between me and the viewer.

But when I got to Perth, there was a strike on the airline and it lasted three weeks. During that time Australian painters appeared to help pass the time, which was simply marvellous. That visit to Perth was the only long stay in one part of Australia that I've ever had and we went out to see Howard Taylor, who they thought, quite rightly, I would very much like to meet and see what he was doing.

So we drove through this landscape of Western Australia, this blonde landscape and arrived at a very small house, clearly built by hand, where Howard lived with his partner. It was extraordinarily dark inside, which was a huge relief. So your eyes became adjusted to seeing things in a different way, and I think that was a very important thing for him. This difference separated the studio and his working life from the landscape.

Jennifer: So it sort of encouraged an interior world in a way?

Bridget: Yes, it did. A reflective one, I would say. The house was very small, but every single little space in it was doing something. And he showed me two things, rather like palettes that he was working on, which could also be seen as tree shapes. You could hold the stem and look in different ways, which was a nice way of looking at an image.

Jennifer: And what was Howard’s background? How did he end up here?

Well he’d been in England. He had been in the Australian Air Force and had taught in an English art school. I think that one led to the other.

We talked about the outback, but not a great deal, because it was simply there. It was not something that you could discuss. When I look now at No horizon, this work of his, I find the title very, very interesting. I feel that I can see No horizon.

Jennifer: Especially given that he was in the outback, which has huge horizons. And what do you think the title indicates?

Bridget Usually, a horizon implies a sense of space and a limit to that space. In nature, these are variable, horizons between land and sky, between sea and sky, or a combination of both.

The horizon is determined by the eye, by the viewer. One goes somewhere, walking over cliffs, down paths, across beaches and the horizon accompanies you. And for an airman flying wherever he was flying…Well, where is it? It shifts enormously and it can drop out of sight.

I think that there's a feeling of great space in No horizon, a space which curves, a space which also contains and has an absoluteness. It’s so well seen and I think that’s why I feel so drawn to it.

Jennifer: And were these concerns that you were exploring in your own painting at the time in terms of, horizons or no horizons, and the quality of light, and your own perspective on those?

Bridget: Yes, I have used vertical lines, diagonal lines, horizontal lines in themselves. They don't symbolise, they fulfil a particular range of functions.

Jennifer: So in terms of Howard Taylor, how do you think No horizon reflects his relationship to nature?

Bridget: I think it must be part of his experience of flying over such enormous spaces.

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Jennifer: So speaking about horizontal lines and vertical lines and horizon lines, your own painting, Gamelan, which you made in 1970 using synthetic polymer paint on canvas, is a striped painting, which is almost three metres wide. And how do you feel that that painting explores not only these ideas around horizontality and verticality but also about the experience of being in a certain place?

Bridget: Well in fact, I made Gamelan in the 70s, soon after I met Howard Taylor. On the way back to England, I stopped off in Jakarta to see Borobudur. Borobudur is a great Buddhist temple. It's built on a square, and it has an open centre. It has a promenade lined with Buddhist statues that one can walk around. It is a wonderful, great monumental and very still place. On that same visit to Jakarta I heard the gamelan played. It is sparse, sharp, percussive, and a very pure instrument. And it seemed to complement the spirit of the temple. Full, rich curves and weight is there. Weight, nothing like the lightness and sharpness of the gamelan. But that contrast was the key.

Jennifer: And how did that experience of music influence your choice of colours in your painting, Gamelan?

Bridget: I used three strong colours – red, blue and green - on a white ground. Green is the constant, surrounding both the others. The proportion of the red varies. They draw back from the centre, slowly exposing shade, gathering a shadow, a veil, even a softness - creating a contrast, a source of energy, if you like.

Jennifer: And have many of your paintings been influenced by music in this way?

Bridget: Yes, I would hope so. I introduce what one might call the theme, the form or the colours, and then their opposite. Then I return to what I've introduced and develop it a little. Then I return to the opposing thing and develop that considerably. Last of all, I close with a return, a reminder of what you have seen or what you have heard.

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Jennifer: One of your major influences in your painting practice has been the 19th century French artist, Georges Seurat, whose painting, Study for Le Bec du Hoc, Grandcamp is in the National Gallery collection. He painted the work in 1885 with oil on canvas. What is it about Seurat that has kept you coming back to him throughout your career as an artist?

Bridget: I think that my initial interest in Seurat has developed and grown through a shared preoccupation in how we look and how we perceive, and a love of contrast in painting. He not only created work that is extraordinarily beautiful, but work that inspires. It inspired Van Vogh, Matisse, Delaunay, the Futurists, and many others – and it gave me a start. I still feel a thrill whenever I look at The Bathers in the National Gallery here in London, quoting to myself, which I do, Felix Feneon’s famous dictum ‘Let the hand be numb, but let the eye be agile, perspicacious, cunning.’ It is a battle cry! But all this would not have been possible without Monet – he went first.

Jennifer: And so what did Seurat take from Monet, and then what did he do with it?

Bridget: Certainly working out of doors, ‘sur le motif’, like this study for the Bec de Hoc. The final painting, the Bec de Hoc itself was painted in the studio. The study provides visual material, the information Seurat is going to need to make his painting. It's very carefully analysed, he uses an optical mixture of colour - Le Melange Optique - the French call it. And, if you take this mixture apart, you see that this wonderful colour of reflected light inside the cliff has deep purples, reds, oranges, and also lighter colours within it to help the luminosity. These are notes, visual notes, painterly notes for the making of the painting.

Jennifer: And this was an approach that you were exploring early on in your career too. I mean, we're sitting beneath a painting that you did on a journey that you took, I think was it in the 60s?

Bridget: Yes, it’s Pink Landscape and I painted it in the late 50s but before that I had copied a small painting in The Courtauld, but I copied on a larger scale so that I could follow Seurat’s thinking.

Jennifer: A small painting by Seurat?

Bridget: Yes, The Pont du Courbevoie. It’s a painting of a bridge over the River Seine seen early on a chilly autumn morning. Seurat divides his colours and applies them in with the pointed tip of his brush in separate touches of pure colour, so small that they blend and mix together as you look. So your eye will be doing the mixing. And this active looking engages you. The viewer plays a major role in the making and realising of a work by Seurat.

Jennifer: So in terms of this wonderful artist, in a sense, taking notes when he's making a painting, it's a form of investigation. Which is something that has deeply informed your work of course, which has always been a form of investigation into looking and a response to looking.

Bridget: Yes, it has. It is a thrilling and mysterious thing. Looking, what one can see and understand, can be honed with exercise and interest. It is an extraordinary and rewarding journey for anyone able and willing to undertake it.

Jennifer: One of the themes of our conversation today, I think, has been about journeys. We’ve been to Indonesia, Australia and France.

Bridget: Travelling and looking.

Jennifer: So maybe we could finish off with another journey...

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The final artwork you’ve chosen is Blue poles by American artist, Jackson Pollock, who was born in 1912 and died in 1956. And he made Blue Poles in 1952 with oil, enamel, aluminium paint and glass on canvas. It’s a huge painting, at almost five metres wide, and two metres high, and I’d love to know how you first came across Pollock’s work.

Bridget: Painters in England had heard about Jackson Pollock and new American painting for quite some time before I had the opportunity to go to America. There had been an exhibition, The New American Painting at the Tate. We had been, of course, either growing up, or those of us who were older, preoccupied by the war. But we were aware that America, having had relative peace, had been able to carry on, to keep the flame burning. And so we were really very, very interested to see what they had been doing.

Jennifer: Could you tell us more about this exhibition at the Tate?

Bridget: It was altogether thrilling, that American show at the Tate. But the one painter that stood out was Jackson Pollock, hung towards the end of the exhibition. He was far more advanced than anyone else. A little while later, Bryan Robertson put on a spectacular exhibition of Pollock at the WhiteChapel Gallery. It was the WhiteChapel in its original form. You came in straight off the street and walked into a very large exhibition space, with a few specially built low brick walls, painted white. Towards the end of the exhibition all the walls were painted black. Bearing in mind that none of us had seen these paintings, which we'd heard so much about and longed to see, this way of introducing us to what was, startling, amazing and extraordinary, by presenting the work in two different ways within the same exhibition, helped people enormously… to see his work, the ideas, the thoughts and the same passionate intensity in two contrasting visual contexts.

Jennifer: And it was the major U.S painter Barnett Newman I think, who introduced you to Blue poles on a trip to New York city?

Bridget: I had seen Barney’s painting in the Tate exhibition in London and I was delighted to meet him at the opening of my exhibition at Richard Feigen’s Gallery in New York. It was the beginning of a good friendship. He and Annalee took me to see three wonderful Abstract Expressionist paintings in Ben Heller’s apartment, one by Mark Rothko, one by Barney himself and Pollock’s Blue poles. We talked about the paintings and Annalee pointed out a new colour in Barney’s painting and we studied Blue poles for some time in silence. It was physically stunning, and exactly what it should be.

Jennifer: And what is that?

Bridget: A great painting. It was thought that Barney might have suggested the poles to Pollock.

Jennifer: Did you ask Barnett Newman if he had suggested the poles?

Bridget: Yes, I did. He didn't answer immediately but standing back, straightening himself he said, “Jackson’s painting”…..”Jackson’s signed it”, and pointing to the corner, “down there”.

Jennifer: I want to thank you very much, Bridget Riley. It’s been absolutely fascinating. Thank you.

Bridget: Thank you, Jennifer.

Jennifer Higgie: Artists’ Artists is a podcast brought to you by the National Gallery of Australia. I'm Jennifer Higgie, and over the course of the series, I'll be chatting with artists about works of art from the National Collection that inspire, move, or intrigue them.

Today we're talking with Janet Laurence, an Australian artist who was born in 1947 and lives in Warrang / Sydney. In 2020-2021, her work was included in the National Gallery exhibition, Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now, Part 1. Janet has nine works in the national collection, including the large scale installation Requiem, 2020.

Janet's practice examines our physical, cultural, and conflicting relationship to the natural world. Employing different media, and at times performance, she creates immersive environments that, in her words, navigate the interconnections between organic elements and systems of nature. Janet, thank you so much for joining me.

Janet Laurence: It's a great pleasure.

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Jennifer: So Janet, the first work that you've chosen from the national collection is Contingent by the German American artist Eva Hesse, who was born in 1936 and died in 1970. It was created in 1969 using cheesecloth, latex, and fibreglass, and it's an enormous, enigmatic, golden and white sculpture that stands over three metres tall, and it appears to float in the air like mysterious sails. When did you first come across this artwork?

Janet: I had seen quite a bit of Eva Hesse's work when I lived in New York. I'd been very interested in her. But I think that particular work I'd seen imaged, because I actually studied her work under Pincus Witton, but I really think the first time I actually saw it was in the National Gallery because I can remember walking in and just feeling incredibly emotionally attached to it, feeling a bit overwhelmed by it. I can remember seeing it there. It was some time ago and I used to wonder why it wasn't more often hanging, to be honest.

Jennifer: And what was it about this work that you found overwhelming and that you found really moving?

Janet: I think it's very, very much about finding a way of expressing an emotional state that I immediately could read. I think knowing a lot about her obviously makes a huge difference, you know, because I can't look at her work without her story. And also, I respond so much to the materiality or matter of art. And that combination that she has there and the likeness of it, is something that really is very – it's not earthed at all, but it's materials that you can relate to life on Earth as well, even though, of course, we know that they're horrible, chemically formed matter that in the end was what killed her. So, there's a strange dichotomy there, in the purity of the work, and it's, really, it's toxicity.

Jennifer: You mentioned that it's hard to look at Eva Hesse's work without being aware of or thinking about her life story. Could you tell our listeners a bit about what Eva Hesse's life story was?

Janet: Well, she was German. She married young and started to develop her work and maintained a very strong relationship with some of the minimalist artists, particularly Sol LeWitt and Richard Serra. And there's a great correspondence of letters as she's starting to develop her art. But she has this kind of agonising experience in trying to evolve the art and trying to accept herself and become an artist. But I think it's quite common, and particularly around that time, for women artists to have this. But she was being very encouraged and I think she really found an incredible language to embody the emotions, in such a strange and experimental way of using materials and I guess that's what I was really interested in. But there is always this emotional overlay of her life that is talked about and especially later when she was back in America and she was teaching at Yale I think she became very ill and died very young and all the works she produced, I think, are quite extraordinary. I remember travelling to a German town to see a show of hers that really was remarkable. But it's always overlaid with this feeling of her whole life because that was made so public.

Jennifer: The works are so atmospheric and they are very delicate, but they're also robust. Do you think that this knowledge of her tragically young life, which she may have got the cancer that killed her from the very material she was using, how does this affect your reading of the work?

Janet: Oh, I think it's inseparable. I mean, I think we always carry all that knowledge with us when we look at art. And I think as artists, when we look at work, well, I find that naturally you gravitate to what you love because of your own interest in it in some way. So, you never really see it very objectively, of course. But I think... That particular work in the Gallery is my favourite of all her works anyway. And I think it is the incredible way it both floats and still has a sense of materiality about it.

Jennifer: And do you feel that Eva Hesse's work has influenced your own treatment of materials or approach to using materials?

Janet: Yes, I'm sure. I looked at her a lot because I was a student in New York at the time when I was seeing her work and I definitely was interested in materials and matter and also in how the material can speak itself and I definitely saw that in her work and also the strangeness of some of her materials. Of course a lot of her work ends up looking quite surrealistic and some of the forms she developed, but overwhelmingly I think I was interested in the fact that she could express emotion through them.

Jennifer: So this work was of course made in 1969, but it also feels very contemporary in many ways with its sort of radical use of materials and its ambiguity. How do you see its relevance today to the 21st century world?

Janet: I see it as very relevant. I mean, it can be seen as something that's quite abstract or quite emotional, as I've said, but I do feel it's a very contemporary work in its use of materials, in the way it hangs, in the way you have to move around it, in the way that it's not like just one iconic view of it, and it sets up all sorts of interesting possibilities. The juxtaposition of those materials and what are they? Yeah, I find it still very contemporary and that it's a work I've always loved and I still love it. And it's funny, you know, bringing in that word love, but I guess I just chose works that you know, I love like that, they mightn't be the greatest works in the Gallery or not. But yeah, that's an important element in the work.

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Jennifer: We'll move on to the second work that you've chosen. And it's Rocks and Mirror Square II by another American artist, Robert Smithson, who was born in 1938 and also died too young in 1973. And it's a very mysterious mirrored cube that is surrounded by basalt rocks and mirrors. And it's just over two metres wide. So, when did you first come across this artwork?

Janet: Again, I was looking at Robert Smithson a lot when I lived in New York. Philosophically, I really responded to him and to his bringing natural history into art. It's something that I had been so interested in and to see an artist like him being accepted for doing this, I thought it was very exciting what he was doing. I love his writings and I love the way that he moves outside the whole gallery and museum into real sites and this work obviously when I saw it in the Gallery, I was just so pleased that the Gallery did have a work of his. I think it represents his work really well though, because it becomes like he had site works and non site works, but this work is so ambiguous in the scale of it because of the way the mirror sort of works in the space. If you remove the gallery space from around it, it just can become immense or quite miniature. You know, you never really know, again, it's a work that you walk around, that you are embodied into. I mean, going back to Eva Hesse, that's the thing about that other work, is that you're so embodied into it yourself. It's that human scale, almost, of those hanging forms. I also feel with the Smithson, that you walk around, you are within the mirror in parts of you. And it invites you into the nature of a place. And I suppose that's what interests me a lot. That I can enter into the being of nature in a place. And I think they're very, um, spatially, very exciting and clever and the use of the materials and the matter of the earth, I find really engaging.

Jennifer: And what do you see as the role of the mirror in this work? You know, he's got objects, the rocks that he's brought in from the outside, but the mirror is obviously made by humans. And so what's its symbolic function here, do you think?

Janet: Well, I think the mirror is also a way of… it disappears as well, you know, so that in fact, it's the immateriality in the work. So again, it distorts the scale of the work. I would have thought that that was the main thing for doing that. I agree it's the man made thing in there, but, I don't know, I'm imagining it's just to try and amplify the ambiguity of the scale of the work so you can concentrate just on that matter and the mirror will disappear. But the funny thing is of course it puts your own reflection into it so it brings you into that space, but it is still immaterial.

Jennifer: When you first came across Robert Smithson's work and his work as an earth artist and a sculptor and a writer, what was it about it that you think influenced your own artistic imagination?

Janet: I didn't get the opportunity to see very many works. I just was reading his writings a lot. I'm so interested in matter and the transformation of matter. I mean, I love alchemy and I'm an animist, you know, I want to animate the world. But I was terribly excited by this sort of writing. You know, I might've gone up the wrong path in being an artist, I probably should have been a scientist or something because I sort of really wanted to make work out of things in nature. I'd sort of always done that when I was very young and I wanted to kind of continue doing that. But I was always discouraged because it wasn't the way you should be working. And in fact, I got severely criticised as a woman for working with nature in my first review ever. Can you believe it? So I think what appealed to me is that he was really doing that. And I mean, I love the other earth artists, but I found they were kind of making more big sculptural statements, whereas I think his was much more philosophical and engaging.

Jennifer: Given again that this was a work that was made decades ago, what do you see as the contemporary relevance of Robert Smithson today?

Janet: I was always interested in Arte Povera and the use of materials in art too. And I still think it's very, very important that we do connect with matter and materials because I think we need that, we need to be connected to earth. I think he’s very, very important today because I think we need it so badly today to understand and animate our earth in order to care for it. And I think art can help in that way to bring attention, you know, to the elements of the earth. So I think he's very relevant.

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Jennifer: The next work you've chosen is Feathered Fence by New Zealand born Australian artist, Rosalie Gascoigne, who was born in 1917 and died in 1999. Feathered Fence was created in 1979 from white swan feathers, galvanised wire netting, and synthetic polymer paint on wood. And it's just under a metre tall and almost eight metres wide. And to my mind, it looks a bit like a white wave about to crash. When did you first come across this artwork?

Janet: I first came across it quite a long time ago, when I was in postgraduate studies, I saw images of Rosalie's work and immediately looked for others, and I saw these works in an exhibition and it could have been that specific work or it could have been a similar one because she often made whole series of works of different things. But I remember so much of her work I really responded to it, and I loved how it connected to the landscape that it was made in. So I probably really didn't examine that work properly until I did see it in the National Gallery. But I was so chuffed that the work was hanging in front of mine and reflected in a mirror in my work during Know My Name. I just felt that was a beautiful connection because as a student I used to visit her and talk to her and, you know all of these things count for, you know, how you feel about an artwork, don't they? Definitely then I have to say an emotional response to this work, but also I do love the fact that they're swan feathers and you sort of think that they were collected from that lake and there were all those swans on that Lake George where she used to wander and collect all her materials and again, I love that connection to the elements of that place.

Jennifer: And Rosalie Gascoigne, like Robert Smithson, had a very deep connection to the land that she worked on. Could you tell us a little bit about her life? You just mentioned Lake George.

Janet: Yes, she lived in the hills above Canberra, and she started quite late in life, and she studied Ikebana in the Sogetsu school in Japan, and I think that has had such an enormous influence on her work in being able to create an order for materials. That these restrained gathered materials that she uses, but she loved this place she lived in and collected, as I said, all these masses amounts of materials from around there. She had a studio there with accumulated things like everything from as we know well, her road sign works and boxes and feathers and all sorts of other natural materials. It was quite a sensational experience to walk into her studio. And she was very… she was just an incredibly natural woman, very connected to the land and an important sense of place in her work, I think.

Jennifer: Do you feel that her approach to the beauty and imperfection and transience has influenced your understanding of landscape art?

Janet: I'm sure. I'm sure. I was always looking at her work. I mean, you allow these influences to come through, of course. And I love the fact that, yeah, like works can decay and this transience, as you mentioned, is an element of it that gets expressed in the work. But she also has this use of the materials all have a memory. The materials that she selects, they have had a former life. And she uses you know, much more what I call materials rather than matter. I sort of think of Smithson using the matter of the earth. But Rosalie using materials that have had already a cultural belonging or, you know have had some other development beyond just Earth's matter. Yeah, so I think she's very different in that way, but they still connect to place very strongly.

Jennifer: And it's interesting to think about Rosalie Gascoigne's work, I think, in terms of our contemporary interest or, you know, need for things like recycling or reusing materials rather than constantly manufacturing materials. Do you think that this is one of the reasons that her work still feels very fresh today?

Janet: Yes, well, I think that's a huge thing to read into the work about this recycling. People are always very curious about what they've been recycled from as well. I don't even know that that interested Rosalie so much as just the way she could order materials so that they speak so strongly. And that's an incredible skill she had, I think, visually in being able to see that, that sort of incredible pattern that could come from her juxtaposition of things. But I think she's a very relevant artist. I mean, they're very powerful works. But very humble too, because of the, you know, the wabi sabi nature of her work, it’s such a Japanese thing, but it fits in so well, you know, with our lives today. I think it's very important to learn that lesson of the humility of things, it’s so important.

Jennifer: Could you possibly explain what the wabi sabi approach is? What does that philosophy entail?

Janet: Oh, the wabi sabi is how something can look. Well, it looks like it's had a whole life, it can look quite old, it has its own story attached to it. It has a patina, it's not fresh and bling, it's nothing like that, it just has this sense of age and story to it. Yeah, and that's considered a beauty in Japan. I consider it a beauty too.

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Jennifer: So Janet, the final work that you've chosen is White painting #2 by the Australian Gumatj artist Nyapanyapa Yunupingu, who was born in 1945 and died in 2021. And White painting #2 was created in 2010, using natural earth pigments and binder on eucalyptus bark. And it's just over a metre and a half tall and half a metre wide. When did you first come across this artwork?

Janet: I saw some exhibitions of hers at Roslyn Oxley Gallery, actually, in Sydney. And I found them spellbinding as paintings. I guess they're paintings, quite sculptural too because mostly they're on bark and there's a beautiful shadow that gets created around them. I found them – it wasn't that long ago, probably three years ago, I had an emotional response really to these works.

Jennifer: And why do you think that was? What was it about these works that moved you so?

Janet: There's an incredible direct, it's not like painting trying to form anything, it's just like the painter's material on the bark, with these big gestural marks, often in the form of stars that look like flowers almost, but I find that they seem to be like a connection to the cosmos. I don't know how to explain that except that they are so, such materiality in it, let's say as a painting, they just seem much more of an object. And I think the way the white paint is often slightly pink or sort of pale brown comes into it, the way it gets different degrees of fluidity on the bark, so that at times it's quite transparent and other times it's quite built up. What I feel looking at those paintings is that they are just done so directly, as though there's some incredible voice speaking to her. Straight away, she just puts it all down and I imagine afterwards she says, that's it. I find that so powerful, you know, there's no deliberation, no going back. I think there was a time when she was trying to tell us some stories, but then she went and allowed them to be much more free. Yeah, I love that. It's so fresh, and you feel you can see the bark, and I mean, of course, like a lot of the bark paintings, but somehow that, the way she painted so directly onto it, just the white and the bark, very, very simple in some way, and yet very deeply connected to some force.

Jennifer: Again, how would you interpret the contemporary relevance of this extraordinary work?

Janet: They're very powerful, and I think powerful art is always relevant. They really speak like a chant or a prayer or something that's just so there. I bought a tiny drawing of hers. I was so transfixed by them. Incredibly beautiful, I think. There's an ability, I mean, sort of like with Rosalie or something, the way the materials work, there's an aesthetic that gets developed that's very engaging. That appeals to the senses, probably than the intellect.

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Jennifer: So all of the artworks you've chosen to highlight seem to be connected to the transience of a changing world and they explore materiality simultaneously with a kind of idea around perhaps transcendence or an idea that something can't be fully articulated. How do you interpret the connective tissue between these artworks?

Janet: Yes, I think they are all very much, as you really so beautifully said, they are all using materials or matter to create something that is really more than what they are. And I think that they are all very powerful because of that and well, three of them are much older works, but I still think that they speak strongly today. I see them very linked by materiality and matter. And as you say, it's the idea of transience and transcendence. I think. What it is, is how we embody those materials and how we feel haptically connected through our bodies and through our senses to the materiality of these works. And I find that's obviously the sort of art I respond to. So I think that whole embodiment is such a huge element in the work and why I get a certain sensation from those works. They all enable me to breathe deeply or to want to embody them. They live somewhere in my memory, but they also live somewhere in my body. This sort of materiality is something much more than just a visual.

Jennifer: And these are themes, of course, that you've explored deeply in your own work. Do you see that all four of these works in some ways have impacted on your creative imagination, and perhaps directed you to new explorations?

Janet: Yes, I do. I mean, you know, these things filter into you and it's not that I'm sitting down writing notes or anything, but it's just that when you have that experience of love of works, they just enter into you and they live in you and connects into your own language and, you know, they sort of occur at different times, I guess, when you're making work, the associations, perhaps, They are important artists to me, yeah.

Jennifer: Janet, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been fascinating hearing about your influences and choices.

Janet: Thank you Jennifer.

Jennifer Higgie: Artists' Artists is a podcast brought to you by the National Gallery of Australia. I'm Jennifer Higgie, and over the course of this series, I'll be chatting with artists about works of art from the national collection that inspire, move, or intrigue them.

Born in 1983 in Indonesia, the artist, Albert Yonathan Setyawan, is based in Tokyo, Japan. Although he works primarily in ceramic, he also translates his ideas into drawings, performance, and video. The National Gallery acquired Albert's monumental work, Shelters, from 2018-19, which comprises 1,800 terracotta components in five architectural forms: mosque, church, temple, stupa, and ziggurat arranged in a five metre grid. Art making, he says, is a way to meditate and contemplate on certain issues. Albert, thank you so much for joining me.

Albert Yonathan Setyawan: It's lovely to be here.

Jennifer: The first work you selected from the National Gallery collection is by the Italian painter and printmaker Giorgio Morandi, who was born in 1890 and died in 1964. Natura Morta, or Still Life, was created in 1956. It's a small, dreamy oil painting that depicts a series of everyday objects in muted colours. When did you first come across this artwork?

Albert: I think I first came across Giorgio Morandi's work in an exhibition in Tokyo. I've become quite familiar with his work through, you know, art books and websites and magazines, but I've never really experienced it looking at them in person since that exhibition. Morandi has the kind of, you know, repetitive method where he decided deliberately to paint the same object. Even though they don't come out as the same, there's a kind of similarity between, and also continuity between one painting to another, which I think somehow I didn't plan it in my own work, but I think over the time I realised that it sort of exists also, from one work to another. This idea of continuity with one another. I know that each work has, you know, separate titles. But I really liked the idea that if one work can connect to another over a certain period of time, it creates this, you know, kind of continuous movement. So I was quite impressed by that idea of familiarity and strangeness at the same time by working with repetitions.

Jennifer: It's really this idea of repetition and renewal, isn't it?

Albert: Yes.

Jennifer: The idea of looking at something so that you can constantly keep reinventing it or seeing it afresh, like in your work Shelters, which is a really monumental work, you examine these forms and you repeat them and repeat them and repeat them. And so there's this sort of almost hallucinogenic repetition of forms.

And so what do you think is the relationship in terms of repetition between your work and Morandi's?

Albert: I think you put it beautifully, repetitions. Over time, I'm working on the same thing. The object that I make comes from the same mould, for example, comes from the same source, but then every tiny little action that I do with the object alters the shape, makes them different. For example, I would, you know, reproduce one stupa shape like in the case of Shelters. Then whenever I try to carve it if I translate it to painting, I think whenever Giorgio Morandi tried to paint a spot or something, I think in the same way that, like, he could paint, like, ten straight lines and they never really become the same straight lines.

Jennifer: Mm.

Albert: I think in that way probably I can translate, I can connect with his work, because it's very organic, it comes from the hands.

Jennifer: It occurred to me too that Morandi's palette, even though of course he's a painter, it's very earthy, it's almost like a kind of ceramic, and often he was painting ceramics too, and he's got those beautiful muted earth tones, and I assume that's something that attracted you as well?

Albert: Yes, I think that's also, I mean in terms of colour I think, It's quite appealing, right? I mean, when I look at the paintings, like, magazines sometimes don't really do justice to the works. Like, when you finally see the works in person, and not only the colour, but also the textures of the paint, the canvas, like the physical quality of the work, really quite appealing to me when I first saw it.

Jennifer: And of course this is a painting that was made about 70 years ago. It's small, it's intimate, it's handmade. What do you see is its relevance to the contemporary moment? Our hyper connected, hyper technical world?

Albert: I think it's about slowness probably, a sense of slowness. I think... That's what really speaks to me with this type of work.

You know, it makes you want to just slow down a little bit and enjoy the shape. Enjoy the painting. Enjoy the colour. And just like really pay attention to what appears in front of you, visually. In comparison to what's going on right now, like everything appears to us on screen, layers, you know, we can open like several different screens on our computer at the same time. So like, there's too many informations, everything moves so fast. So I’m really quite drawn to a type of work that produces a sense of like, slowness.

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Jennifer: The next artwork you've chosen is by the German artist Wolfgang Leaib, who was born in 1950. Milk stone was created in 1980 out of marble and milk. A minimal white rectangle, it's nearly a metre long and weighs 52 kilos. So when did you first come across this work?

Albert: I first came across Wolfgang Leaib's work, again, through through magazines, but I finally got to see the marble and the milk. They also pour the milk. It was quite fascinating. Like I saw the work - it's so, it's so ordinary. You know, nothing really gets grandiose about it. Like it's a slabs of stone, a warm colour white with like a really thin layer of milk on top of it. It's so simple. It's so ordinary as if there's nothing going on. But at the same time, there's a lot going on if you are willing to really just stand still and look and think about the work.

Jennifer: You wrote that it reminds you of silence. And what do you mean by that? How does milk and marble remind you of silence?

Albert: I can understand that it sounds very abstract, but I stumbled upon this book called The World of Silence by Max Picard. It was written in 1948. Silence, in Picard’s definition, is not the absence of sound or the absence of noise or the absence of anything. He says that it's something where language comes from.

He says that it's like language or anything that is part of our phenomena comes from silence. So he was trying to explain the silence as something that is... really primal, really deep down inside where something that cannot be communicated, something that stays in between, that cannot be conveyed through words. So it was really abstract, but at the same time also I can relate to that idea.

Jennifer: Does silence for you in this rather sort of philosophical framework, does it have a spiritual dimension? I mean in many ways what you're describing sounds like a kind of Zen Buddhism.

Albert: For Picard himself, because he is a Catholic, I think obviously for him there is a lot of spiritual meaning in it. But for me…over time I've gone through some changes in terms of understanding my own work. I realised that a few years back, around five or six years ago probably, I was still thinking in my works in terms of expression of spirituality. But now, I've begun to realise that it's probably not about spirituality at all.

Partly because... I have a problem with the definition of spirit and spirituality itself, because spirituality seems to look at the world in two opposite aspects, like the dualism. It seems to point out the dualism between material and materiality, the spirit and the body. It's always like that. And there's an emphasis that the spirit is always the true essence, the real self.

So I have a problem with that because the more I work with ceramic, in which everything is very physical and my body is in whole, it's very intense, then it’s not about whether there's the spirit, which is the essence, and then the material is just the shadow of the reflection of the essence. It seems to be like they are just two components. They have to be there for things to work out. If you bake something, for example, you have the flour, you have the water, you can't separate the flour from the water once it becomes bread. So I feel like existence is almost like that, like it's a combination of several different things that have to be mixed. Through that understanding, I understand silence a little bit differently from Max Picard. Although I can connect the way he tried to point out silence as in the ability for humans to, kind of, to express something poetically. Something to feel something, to understand something that cannot be explained through words. So in the case of Wolfgang Leib’s work, I think that's how I can connect it. Like it's so primal, based on material itself, the materiality of the marble and the milk. It's not about concept anymore. It's like, it's beyond concept. I think in that case, that, that's why it reminds me of like Max Picard's Silence.

Jennifer: I'm very curious actually, to hear more about your choice of places of worship in Shelters and how that might relate to what you were just discussing about the nature of spirituality and religion.

Albert: There's two sides, I think, in Shelters, two aspects I'm trying to represent, try to express. One is that I don't really deny spirituality, but at the same time I'm trying to question it also. Like, is it really spirituality or is it just something else? I think the reason why I chose the title Shelters is also because I wanted people to think that it's a space where people can, you know, like a shelter, they can find refuge. But at the same time, I arranged it in a way that it's actually trying to trap people. Like, once you are in, it's kind of almost impossible to get out. You're like trapped in the maze. So, there's these two aspects that I'm trying to express, I think, through that work.

I want to know why people have faith and how, how can you reconcile faith and reason, for example, how do you find balance between faith and reason? And also in the context of religious practice in Indonesia, for example, there's all this diversity in different religious traditions, trying to find the balance between it.

Jennifer: So how do you interpret the contemporary relevance of Milk stone, you know, which was created, as I mentioned, in 1980? How can it nourish us? How can it fascinate us? What's its function now, do you think?

Albert: I think this primal quality, this materiality of the quality of matter and substance is, I think, always relevant. I mean, we live in an era where everythings like, digitised. Uh, you know, this AI and stuff like physical matter, physical substance seems to matter probably for some people, but they've actually, it actually becomes more relevant I think right now. You know, everything is just fabricated and easily made, you know. So what I find really fascinating, which I think would always speak to any people who was willing to look deeper in the case of Wolfgang Laib’s work for instance, I think it's materiality.

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Jennifer: The third artwork that you've chosen is by the Austrian-British potter Lucie Rie, to whom touch and material and the handmade was also extremely important. She was born in 1902 in Vienna and she died in London in 1995 and her work Vase was created around 1979 and it's quite small. It's only about 30 centimetres tall. It's a wheel thrown vase. And it has a very simple, almost black glaze and a wide trumpet lip. Tell us about Lucie Rie and how you first came across her work.

Albert: Yeah, I first came across Lucie Rie’s work when I was a student. So, yeah, it was quite inspiring to see her works at the time. I was really fascinated by how delicate it was. Even just looking at it through pictures as this like really, visceral quality. It's almost like you can feel traces of her hands, like on the surface of the pots. I think even more so as I learned how to make ceramics myself, I began to understand how difficult it was to do it in terms of technicalities, how to achieve those types of lines, for example, shapes or the thickness and the thinness of the body of the ceramics. I began to appreciate even more the works and it began to inspire me even more.

Jennifer: In terms of the contemporary relevance of this work, it was made more than 40 years ago, but what do you see as its relevance to the here and now?

Albert: I think in relation to materiality, whenever I'm in the studio working, somehow, clay or ceramics it reminds me of the idea of a body, like an embodiment of something. So, when it comes to Lucie Rie, that's what I feel. It's like the constant concentrations of energy or like, or whatever, her experience, and then she directed all those things into making into this object. And so that object somehow becomes an extension of her body. And when it comes to relevance to our present situation, I think a lot of our experience have been - we are actually, there's a lot of disembodied experience, I think they say, you know, it's almost as if with the development of technology, it feels like the body, it's becoming less and less important. Our corporeal body, our physical body, the fact that we exist in the world through this body, the fact that we have senses and we have any, like all kinds of perceptions that we have over the world. We get it through our body. It is really impossible to not have a body. If I take the questions a little bit further to its extreme, like, can I have a body or not? Then if we have all the technology, if we're able to say, transfer our brain to sort of, you know, technology that can store our memory and can replicate how the mind works into AI or something like that. Is it really possible to live in a world in which we don't exist as a bodily, you know, as a corporeal body? So, whenever I deal with some work like this, like Lucie Rie and Wolfgang Laieb’s, it always reminds me of their quality. I think in that way, it's still relevant. It will still be relevant given, you know, 10, 20, 30 years.

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Jennifer: The final artwork you've chosen, which is Untitled No. # 4, created in 1977 from gesso, ink wash and graphite on canvas by the American artist, Agnes Martin, who was born in Macklin, Canada in 1912 and died in Taos in New Mexico in 2004. And in a way she was exploring many of the ideas that you've been talking about with these other artists. Her language was quite minimal, but it's very handmade. She was deeply interested in the role of the body and the spirit and the relationship between the two. It's a square work, it's just shy of two metres, and it's an off white colour inscribed with a very delicately drawn grid. When did you first come across the work of Agnes Martin?

Albert: I've never seen this work in person, although I've seen the other work. What I always like about Agnes Martin's painting is that this really radical way of building, you know, physical compositions. Nothing really speaks louder than anything else. Everything is just unified. You know, all lines are made the same, the same distance or the same thickness. But then, even though it's mechanical, there is a human quality in it. You know, there's the fact that it's not the same line. The more it goes to this really symmetrical, arranged, mechanical geometric forms, the more you feel that it's very human somehow. I don't know why it's a weird effect.

Like, sometimes the asymmetrical structure seems a bit too superficial sometimes for me. So I tend to gravitate towards something that is really symmetrical, which is, I think that is actually even more human to me. It goes beyond the superficial, it goes beyond what is pleasing to the eye, for example. I think it can be quite hard, right? When you look at something that's really symmetrically arranged, some people may feel uncomfortable. I think it's the same way also when people look at my work. And because I try to do that also in my work, I try to arrange them in a symmetrical way. Comments for example, like, do you have OCD? Or like, are you… like, do you have, things like that. It's as if, like, what I do is actually not as natural or even as a human being can be, you know, like, not a natural act to do that. It is something that is forced because it's mechanical. When I feel it’s the opposite actually. I think we need structures, we have structures. And the way I do it is I'm just trying to express the structure in visual. So that's what I see in Agnes Martin. It's really radical in a way that there is no hierarchy at all. No top, no bottom, no left, no right. You can almost flip it. And it's so fascinating. I really like it. It's so enigmatic also because it's very simple, you know, nothing much going on in the painting, it's just lines. But at the same time, you know, it's not about the lines itself, it's about how she draws the lines. It's about how she paints the painting. It's about how the painting came to be.

Jennifer: I mean, this really relates back to what you were saying about the importance of the body being involved in a work of art, in a way that, ostensibly, if you look at it from a distance, her work often looks quite mechanical, as you say, but when you get close, they're, you know, exquisitely beautiful lines. Often wobbly lines, very hand drawn lines. And so there is this sense of the individual within technology. And would you say that that is one of the many reasons that her work is still relevant today?

Albert: I think so. What I see in Agnes Martin's work, it's about existence. It's about the particular. It's about the way the line is drawn, and it's located in the body. Like, it is impossible to get that line without imagining the artist herself drawing it, doing it, painting, or like, moving her hands in a certain ways, positioning her body in a certain way. That, to me is quite fascinating. But it doesn't remind me right away of essence, but it reminds me of the body.

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Jennifer: If we think about the works you've chosen from Giorgio Morandi, from Wolfgang Leaib, from Lucie Rie, and Agnes Martin, artists from different countries, different generations, with very different approaches. What do you think, very simply, links the work of all of these four artists?

Albert: Materiality. I think that that's one thing that sort of connects all of these ideas. I was, it's a term that I've been thinking about also quite a lot of times, because I just love substance. I love working with matters because it’s, something's really intriguing to me when I think about how the body works or how our senses work, for example, how we can see. It always makes me feel anxious whenever I think about how I cannot see what is inside of my body. Like I have an eye, ear, that can hear all kinds of sound outside and see all kinds of things outside. But it is so annoying that I can't see myself inside. Most of the time we pay attention to the outside world. I realised that when working with matter, and we're dealing with materialities of any substance, clay, or you know, painting, canvas, wood, or whatever it is, metals. There's always this quality in the matter itself that sort of wanted to draw us inside of it, not physically or not scientifically, but poetically, or metaphorically, or imaginatively, probably, through our imagination. We want to be inside.

So I think it speaks to the conditions that our existence is really finite, it's really limited. And our senses are so limited also. And the way that we can reach into this really, you know, this unreachable area in which our senses cannot reach. It's by working on something, by making something.

So by doing that, dealing with matter, the matter itself creates this sort of reflective quality that reflects our conditions in a way. It has, it becomes like a mirror to me.

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Jennifer: Thank you so much, Albert, for joining me today. I've really enjoyed talking with you.

Albert: My pleasure.