Interview with Xanthe
AJ:I think, yeah, I've been too much on my computer, or not even a lot on my computer, but it feels accessible, it feels wherever I go. After Michaelis in some ways, I just felt I don't know, I really loved my bricks, but now the heaviness of carrying everything, and moving things to and fro - there's so much drama involved. Whereas with writing, or with kind of computery art, it feels lighter, lighter.
Xanthe:It's interesting thinking about you working in such a shifted way. Computery things definitely don't have the same language as bricks, or things that spill. I think I am thinking of how you’ve also worked with ice - things [materials] that are super transitory whereas text feels a bit like an etching.
AJ:It's funny because it is that, but there's also a bit of - I almost wish I had recorded how the text has transformed over because it's… I'll go back to a text after a month, and then I edit it and do something else.
AJ:A few months ago I got really interested in, I mean not really, just kind of interested in sandpaper. And what I did like about engaging with it was you almost lost a bit of the thing. The thing becomes what it's in process.
Xanthe:I think you've also worked a lot with that kind of fleeting material capture where you briefly hold on to something.
AJ:I think I need to think about why that is or what I like about that… I guess it feels less serious in some ways…
Xanthe:What? The fleetingness of something?
AJ:Yeah, it doesn't feel I have to be so particular about this one specific thing…
Xanthe:Well, it's, I guess, an ongoing engagement, so it's not as stuck
AJ:There's been bricks, which also…but they all represent. I guess with those things, they don't feel necessarily just about the material, but also about what that can represent, even not necessarily, to everyone, but just to me. So the sandpaper, and it still has a relationship to dust, and I really like dust. And, the loss that happens in that process. It also feels like it has something to say by itself.
Xanthe:Just because of the material?
AJ:Yeah, and where it's in context, in its other contexts.
Xanthe:Yes, in other contexts it still functions. It's like you've borrowed it a little bit.
AJ:It still references what it was, or what it sometimes is in other spaces. So it's the same with bricks, it was what bricks represent within the context of this world, or within how people generally engage with bricks on a day to day.
Yeah. I guess people have their own relationships to these things, but I liked that.
I have a sewing machine. So I've sometimes been sewing things. I tried to make another parachute type thing.
Xanthe:When you say another one, when was your last one?
AJ:I made one for my final exhibition. It becomes a parachute, but then parachutes also are in context of other things. So it's a piece of art, but there's still always a relationship to what it means. It's outside of its functionality. And obviously it's not functional, but people know, okay, well, what do parachutes do? What is this? Whereas I guess if I think of oil paintings and stuff, it doesn't feel…
Xanthe:You're not borrowing anything.
AJ:Yeah. Or sharing this use.
I was reading Sarah Ahmed's ‘What’s the use’. And in that, she talks a lot about use. How you walk a path and you trot on this path and you make use of this path, but then after a while, maybe because it's been worn down too much, you have to make a new path because that's been too useful, you know, or used.
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Xanthe:And then, what’s a good entry point into…or how do things begin? It is quite a situational question.
AJ:Text at the moment, because even if I think, at the beginning of last year, I got really, I'd take excerpts of my text and then try and make it into something else. But text was the first thing. Yes, and if you think of a lot of my other makings, it's always generally the first First thing and then maybe I'll be interested in a particular word that will expand into some sort of practice or making, but it's usually the words first. I made receipts but then the receipts were poetry bits.
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AJ:Shadows, yeah. Cutouts. Fabric, I don't know, sandpapery type things. Yes. I tried using plaster and stuff. Very building-y type things. Wax.
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Xanthe:If you are working on sculpture and installation as you like to work in, when you are using a material that is, if you're using any of these materials, you're building something instantly, you make a thing that has a mass. Yes. Although, obviously, you sometimes do work with dust and ice… but there's this feeling that the thing enmasses to something, and the value of it is in its material. As well as that whole thing of borrowing a function from something. Yes, yeah. And, you're almost borrowing the poetics of it too. And then I think if you're painting, you have to build all of that up from scratch. And it's, the value is very different in the relationship to the work.
AJ:It feels, not like too mine. It feels more communal, I guess. The materials that I use don't feel too stagnant, or even in that way. Part of the thing that I like about materials is how it can converse, and if it has its own, I guess position in the conversation already, then that's helpful.
Xanthe:Yes, you can just figure out the stuff around it, and not that entire position.
AJ:And I can put it in different contexts, but it still has something.
Xanthe:It's solid from the beginning.
AJ:I think in some ways, I struggle with the finality of coming up with when a work is done.
Xanthe:Well, it just feels like you have a very interesting relationship with when, I don't know if I'm just harking on about this one thing, but the way that the materials are you are borrowing their functionality and so you borrow it for one exhibition and then it might shift for the next. You borrow their material meaning and then you borrow their functionality for your use as well. And then it can shift. That they aren't fixed in that way?
AJ:Yes. It does feel constantly reiterating. The things that I'm attached to.
It doesn't give way to being manipulated or continued upon. So I think the processes that I like are ones that you can kind of revisit.
Xanthe:I'm just thinking say you're working with bricks, right? They have more of a structure already, and they have more of a functional structure. And then when you're borrowing the meaning of the brick, they always return to that same meaning. Whereas if you're borrowing clay, it's too much of a medium. It doesn't have as much of a I'm not moving kind of energy.
AJ:Don't push me.
XantheYeah, can you just be your own person?
AJ:I also think that's why I like people's artist statements. Because if I don't know what their context is for…
Xanthe:Yeah. You want to know how they position their own work.
AJ:Yeah. Even for [artist friend] their work could go so many different ways, but I know what [artist friend]’s position of those objects are for herself, so I can access it that way.
Xanthe:Yes, and the materials also then take on a new meaning.
AJ:Yeah. But they always will be what they once were.
Xanthe:Yes. Yeah, they always would've been what they always are …what they could've been
Additional Questions:
01. Could you speak to me more about what you like about materials that are not serious? What does this mean and why is it important to you?
In my head the seriousness of a material is dependent on their proximity to my initial understandings of art - or what we may expect of art materials - i guess their ‘role’. In part, I think the not-so-serious materials feel more possible - as if there aren’t as many rules or perhaps I feel more comfortable to be rule-less - and get to know the materials on my own through a ‘fate-less’ playfulness? These materials feel they hold their own - they arrive already alive- and in using them, they always function in reference to their past usages - they mean more.
02. Could you talk to me more about why it is important for a material to feel less yours?
It feels less stuck that way, to feel mine is to feel permanent and possessive, as if I am pulling it down to here and now. What interests me in art is this other dimension of ‘ours’ that seems to float about and holds the capacity for a life that continues.
03. You have spoken to me about your practice beginning in text often. You attach meaning to specific text, often phrases, could you talk to me about some phrases you are drawn to at the moment?
I can’t stop thinking about something I heard recently “you are supposed to be sad at a funeral”. It feels weighted and able to point at so many things so simply. I guess at the moment it seems to describe a feeling I’ve been feeling.
04. How do these phrases relate to materials you work with?
For me “you are supposed to be sad at a funeral” is deeply connected to a previous phrase I would think about - “your house is on fire what are you going to take?”. It is the newest iteration of the feeling I have been feeling about home - the world. And so, the materials I have been drawn to are in reference to home in some way or the other - perhaps secretly at times. So too, loss and grief determine my understanding of these materials - burnt wax feels like a candle or prayer that has been completely exhausted. So maybe these phrases and texts help me meet the materials and give me some sort of orientation rather than an exact road ahead.
05. Can you talk to me more about your use of transitory medis such as shadow?
I think I transience due to my aversion to the heaviness of “once and for all” - I like the potential of surprise that transience allows - the feeling of being caught off guard by something you thought you knew. Perhaps how transience feels conversational and taps into my interest in translation - translation in various ways. It feels more of the world - it doesn’t feel trapped.
06. Could you talk to me about your practice of installation and how layering plays a role?
Installation allows for an experience of space - of accounting space in the process - I think of setting the scene of my practice - of asking the art and the viewer to be present - of holding it all at once. Layering allows me to remake up my mind and vary in my expression - of getting to know the pieces more - of falling deeper within - through a shuffling of the sequence - the story.