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Season Two

1. The Same Sky with Lucreccia Quintanilla

How can we make Culture rather than Art? Is the sky a black velvet blanket?

Tai and Lucreccia discuss how having a punk attitude and how not necessarily wanting to fit in can be a good thing. Lucreccia talks about a process of finding ‘her people’ and then simply asking ‘what do we wanna do?’ as a way to begin making work. Together they share their love of the power of the dance floor and the mystery of the conch.
Additional resources: Lucreccia Quintanilla, the Banff artist in Residence program, Octavia Butler.

2. The Empathy Highway with Archie Barry

How can we share an experience without using words? What is it like to feel the push and pull of presence and hiding?

Tai and Archie chat honestly about what role identity plays in Archie’s practice and how they are interested in expressing that identity in a non-visual way. They discuss the beautiful and sometimes frustrating ‘slipperiness’ of language and how cultivating the agency and capacity to connect with an audience can be a truly energising and grounding experience.
Additional resources: Tatsache, Hypnic, Verdanta

3. Pansies, Moons and Chameleon Words with Laura Skerlj

Is a painting like a poem? How do we make our own rules when we are painting?

In this conversation Tai and Laura discuss their migrant roots in Australia and how this affects the ethics of how they live and work. Laura shares her secret practice of writing ‘tragic poems’ and how these are slowly creeping into her paintings. They share their love of double meanings and layering of possibilities in our palettes alongside other women painters they admire.
Additional resources: Laura Skerlj, Leslie Vance, Ann Craven

4. Stories of Fearless Women with Paola Balla

How can mockery and humour be used as a tool for survival? How do you write yourself into a history that has always favoured men?

In this conversation Tai and Paola go on a raucous storytelling romp through Paola’s vibrant past, recounting her ‘triple-whammy of Otherness’ as a young Wemba Wemba/Gunditjmara woman, with an Italian dad and a Chinese surname in Echuca/Moama in the ’80s. Paola talks about the strong influence of indigenous women’s voices like Aunty Marge Tucker, and the links to the incredibly powerful artwork she continues to make around this to this day.
Additional resources: Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance – WAR, Aunty Marge Tucker, Bennelong’s Letter, Djuki Mala dancers, 2018 Naidoc Week, History of NAIDOC, Sovereignty at ACCA, Dadirri (deep listening) – Dr Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr

5. Agatha in Puzzling World with Agatha Gothe-Snape

What is Conceptual Art? How can we do away with Visual Litter?

Tai Snaith and Agatha Gothe-Snape talk about the practice of deep thinking and the process of taking ideas apart. They discuss the fine balance of keeping all the parts of the ‘plait’ of one’s life even and neatly braided, and what it means to follow a series of decisions to consciously take away anything extraneous to create strong, clear work. Agatha talks about her ongoing desire to ‘cut through the conceptual fog with a sharp knife’ and even her lifelong goal to be a mascot for Puzzling World.

Additional Resources:
Mitch Cairns’ Archibald-winning portrait, Every Artist Remembered, Lawrence Weiner, Puzzling World NZ

6. Invisible Forces of Powerful Women with Sanné Mestrom

Can we maintain a lightness of being using heavy materials? What is the role of a public artist and how is this changing?

In this spirited conversation, Tai and Sanné discuss what it means to be a self-made woman interested in the relationship between the lived world and the perceived world.

They talk about depicting women with ‘gravity’ and a new way of how the female form might fit into the landscape. They discuss embarking on motherhood as an early to mid career artist and being okay with breastfeeding in the foundry, amongst many other things.

Additional resources: Sanné’s website, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Prudence Flint, Architectural follies, Manifesto

7. Portrait of a Bright Future with Atong Atem

How important is it to make yourself and others visible? What can a photograph achieve, and what is the power of the photographer?

Tai and Atong discuss all the different aspects of Atong’s identity and how making sense of them informs her artwork. Atong explains what it is like to grow up ‘between cultures’ as a South Sudanese person in Australia and the liminality that exists as part of that. Atong openly addresses the complex nature of racism and the very real issue of ‘everyday racism’, often by ‘good’ people. With a practice that has always leaned towards portraiture and self-portraiture, this conversation with Atong very much revolves around ideas of the self, the power of the photographer, and power of accessing and owning your family history.

Additional resources: Atong’s website, Native Tongue by Mojo Juju, The Guardian article: Turnbull on ‘sudanese gangs in Melbourne’, LightWork website, The Bakehouse Project, MECCA M-Power 

8. Spatial Memories with Esther Stewart

How might an artwork be part of the language of interiors or functional design? How important is understanding scale and process?

Tai and Esther go deep into process during this conversation. They discuss Esther’s studio process and what it means to adopt a more design-based practice and apply it to painting. Esther outlines the different stages of making a body of work from the ‘suitcase of patterns’ and ideas phase through to experimenting, ‘jiggled out thinking’, trialling, planning, making models  and finally the labour or making stage. They unpack the notion of thresholds, taste, perspective and the uncomfortable but interesting problem of what happens when a visual artist’s work becomes part of the decor.

Additional resources: How to Decorate a Dump at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Gertrude Contemporary, The world is waiting for the sunrise at TCB, MPavilion

9. Lace Borders and Honey Highways with Stanislava Pinchuk

How can we make traces of suffering into visual poetry? How do we map emotional data?

Tai Snaith and Stanislava Pinchuk talk about the different ways we can make our art practice meaningful to our lives, and the lives of others. They discuss how Stan has managed to include travel, meeting people, tattooing and even beekeeping as integral parts of her practice. She explains her deeply thoughtful process of ‘data mapping’ and how it relates to her tattooing practice via shared modes of intimacy, trust, intensity and visual economy or minimalist language. We discuss the long-practiced traditions of making and wearing decorative motifs on the body and the utopian idea of exchanging honey and art and ideas in place of money.

Additional resources: Artist website, Profile in Forbes, Borders (The Magnetic Fields) at China Heights, NGV dumps Wilson Security over offshore detention, The Guardian

10. Radical Intentions with Kate Just

What does it mean to make artwork with a social consciousness? How do we represent our politics through what we wear?

Tai and Kate discuss the way that clothes, like skin, can carry a multitude of meanings, stories and histories to make up who we are. Kate talks about using other artists’ clothes as the palette or starting point for constructing her current portraits. Our conversation outlines Kate’s very real motives for making change within the art institution to make it a more diverse and balanced community and the capacity that each of us have to work together to achieve change.

Additional resources: Feminist Fan, Kate’s PhD project, The Texture of Her Skin, Catherine Opie, Kate’s dream, Paris is Burning (1990), The Furies Kate Just, The Furies Britannica, City of Port Phillip Rupert Bunny Fellowship, Tracy Connelly article in The Age 2018

11. Markers of Occupation with Megan Cope

How important is it to connect with a place that is part of your history? What are your responsibilities to make work for ‘your people’ as well as an art audience?

Tai and Megan discuss what it means to move back to work ‘on country’ as a contemporary Indigenous artist. They unpack the complexities of relating to a place and its people, and how that might inform your work in a number of different ways. Megan talks about her involvement with proppaNOW and various travels from the bush to the city, overseas and now back to her father’s country on Quandamooka land. She sheds light on her passion for Middens and how they function in Indigenous culture, and their history as one of the earliest forms of architecture in the landscape.

Additional resources: Middens, RE FORMATION at The National, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, Haunt at IMA Brisbane, Cope’s work in Sovereignty at ACCA, Melbourne, Sovereignty at ACCA, Melbourne, :
Blaktism, Elizabeth Durack, proppaNOW

12. Seen and Heard with Rowan Oliver

What roles can social politics and social media play in driving an art practice? What role do beauty and aesthetic boundaries play in art today? How can these things interrelate?

Tai and Rowan delve down the rabbit hole of creating fictions around ideas and images of self and others, creating characters and narratives to open up ideas of social inclusiveness and empathy. Rowan outlines how we should keep making these fictions despite the despair around us. How does marketing affect our image of ourselves? What roles or characters do we play in social media? And what role do we play in the art world? Is it all a play? Rowan refreshingly discusses how she can foresee parts of her practice ‘shedding’ and talks frankly about choosing the path with the most flexibility of being open with herself. We also discuss Casting as a medium, playing the ‘art system game’ and her plans of moving into ‘Aquarian frequencies and taking down the government’.

Additional resources: Rowan’s website, Rowan’s Instagram, Crumbling World Runway (performance at MoMA PS1), Gifts for Manus and Nauru, David Rosetsky,
Women Who Run with the Wolves, Stanislavski’s system, Spencer Tunick

13. Always looking, always learning with Meredith Turnbull

How does being a teacher affect your art practice? How can an artist successfully engage with an institution’s collection? How do we create our own opportunities and categories? What does it mean to trust your gut?

For this final episode of the second series, Tai and Meredith discuss a broad range of topics around what it means to have a multifaceted, self-driven and supported practice. They share their love and importance of championing OTHER artists — what it means to not be a curator but to keep curatorial skills as part of your practice. Once again the notions of collapsing the boundaries between traditional notions of craft, ornament and art are highlighted and celebrated. Meredith praises the approachability of jewellery and the way it acts as a continuation of dialogue around ideas of genre, discipline and material values.

Together they question what ‘achieving’ and ‘professionalism’ really mean. Finally, the importance of looking back, taking stock of our practices; recognising what we have overcome and achieved and really asking which direction we want to take next.

Additional resources: Meredith’s website, Closer at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, John Nixon’s pottery collection at Deakin University Art Gallery, Very Good Advice from Alice in Wonderland, Shakespeare Grove studios, QAGOMA’s Children’s Arts Centre 

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Season One

The first season of this podcast series was commissioned for ACCA’s exhibition Unfinished Business: Perspectives on art and feminism (2017–2018) and featured 13 artist interviews:

1. World Weaver — visual artist Chaco Kato

How do we fit into the art world? Can we create our own world?
Tai and Chaco explore ideas of how and why you might create your own support network, collective or cross-community project. Chaco literally weaves her own context and explores traditionally domestic crafts on a giant scale.
Additional resources: Slow Art Collective

2. Window to the Inside — painter Katherine Hattam

How do we access our True Selves?
Tai and Katherine discuss how making and depicting space can merge the inside (mental) world with the outside (public) world of politics and ideas. Reflecting on Katherine’s interest in psychoanalysis and unconscious time vs real time and how family life can be political.
Additional resources: Jennifer Higgie on Instagram, At home with Rose Wylie

3. Dark Laughs — sculptor Claire Lambe

How do we dig up dark memories from our past and make them funny?
Tai and Claire share a lively chat about dark satire as a way of communication in art practice and how the past, present and future can all exist in an artwork right now. Claire shares tales of the ‘white-knuckle-ride’ that is making work and how she manages to deal with feelings of vulnerability and stress.
Additional resources: Mother Holding Something Horrific, ACCA 2017

4. Non Binary Futures — guitarist Tonié Field

Don’t put me in a box! How can we celebrate and encourage fluidity?
Tai and Tonié discuss what it means to be a non-binary and progressive artist in a classical world.  How might we express overtly political ideas through an abstract language like music. They share a boisterous and heartfelt journey through the worlds of Drag, Burlesque and Fashion as well as the serious issues of feeling safe within the educational institution and getting ‘Tired of the fight.’
Additional resources: ‘Finding Nevo (how I confused everyone)’ by Nevo Zisin, Becky Stromher TED Talk, Maddonna’s acceptance speech, Billboard Woman of the Year

5. Her Life in The Nude — performer and director Maude Davey

How can we be open and honest and take risks, but still feel safe?
Tai and Maude talk about making work about women and what exactly does it mean to take risks in front of an audience? They share the frustration of finding it easier to write about other people’s work than their own and how to deal with failure. They ask the hard question; ‘What happens as you get older and your body can’t perform in the same way anymore?’
Additional resources: The Bechdel Test, A Director Prepares by Anne Bogart (chapter six: Embarrassment

6. Tempering Tenacity — visual artist Lou Hubbard

 How can we find our true methodology and maintain a healthy obsession?
Tai and Lou talk about taking your time in life to find your true creative path. They also talk about tenacity, bossiness and learning how to defer control and practice patience. Lou says ‘The artist in me doesn’t sit down’ and they explore what it means to be truly obsessed by your work, but how to keep a healthy balance with your family and ‘shave away the extraneous’ aspects of your life.
Additional resources: Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee, Flannery O’Conne

7. Control / Escape — dancer and choreographer Shelley Lasica

How and what do you present to an audience? Where does the line between yourself and your work begin?
Tai and Shelley discuss the assumptions about ‘revealing the truth’ in dance and how creating complexity and a kind of ‘unhooked narrative’ that is not linear or logocentric might be a more exciting way of looking at things. We also discuss the idea of playing with ‘the gaze,’ the fraught relationship between needing approval from an audience and making work within a female body.
Additional resources: Lip Magazine, Margaret Lassica

8. Big Horizons — visual artist Sally Smart

How do our gestures and bodies become part of our work? And how is the act of cutting a feminist action?
Tai and Sally talk about female identity and archetypes of women such as pirates, witches and more- ideas which have been present in Sally’s life and imagination since she was a child. We talk about the act of cutting and how the female identity is both fragile and sturdy, but ultimately ‘re-arrangeable’ and fluid.
Additional resources: Ballet Russes costumes, NGA, Canberra

9. Natural Woman — sculptor Patricia Piccinini

How do we use work to explore ideas of motherhood and morality?
Tai and Patricia discuss what it means to be a mother and continue a successful art practice. They talk about issues of postnatal depression and anxiety, partners and family life. They also talk about owning and celebrating your fecundity and creating ‘finely crafted love letters’ to your audience with your work.
Additional resources: Skywale

10. Painting Yourself out of the Dark — painter Diena Georgetti

What is it like to live with a mental illness and make art? How important is editing when it comes to being an artist?
Tai and Diena discuss how difficult it can be when we are critical not only of our work but also of ourselves. They talk about finding consolation in successful works we have made and painting as a way of existing when life itself is really really hard.

11. Wild Thing — artist Jenny Watson

What does it mean to be an ‘Aussie Artist’? What is wildness and how do we allow it space to thrive?
Tai and Jenny share their love of horses and the freedoms they offer to us as young girls whilst taking a close look at the Australian and international gallery scene and the ‘sober business of art’. They talk about the importance of depicting ‘broken women’ and female iconoclasts in paintings and the power of imagining other versions and stories for yourself.

Additional resources: The Fabric of Fantasy at Heide Museum of Modern Art, I, Tonya

12. Stepping into the Circle — Rachel Nolan

How does design incorporate memory and materiality? What would our built environment be like if clients and architects revived the world of imagination?

Tai and Rachel discuss the language of landscape in relation to and as an integral part of Architecture. They talk about the very personal process of designing a house and how it can influence families by making us WAIT and SHARE. They explore how rules in your practice can evolve from instincts, which in time evolve into built patterns. They also address the changing landscape of women architects careers, flexible working models and juggling it all.

Additional resources: Marion Mahoney

13. Making dreams come true — Maree Clarke

How important is it to visualise your work coming to life? How well do you know your self, your history and your place in the world?

Tai and Maree get pretty heavy and emotional in an electric conversation about making contemporary work from loaded memories and histories. They talk about how important it is to avoid being put in a box, seize opportunities and be true to your self and your people. Maree talks about how she uses her work to explore and tell stories of grief, belonging and perhaps most important of all, healing.

Additional resources: Making a kangaroo tooth necklace