A world of One’s Own

With a nod to Virginia Woolf’s essay ‘A room of one’s own’ from 1929, Tai Snaith has conducted a series of conversations with established women and non-binary gender diverse artists whom she admires. Recorded in her bedroom, these relaxed, colloquial exchanges between generations explore shifts and similarities that women artists face in their lives and artistic practices. Notions such as self doubt, control, meaning, shame, risk, motherhood and radicalism are some of the rich topics covered. The work is part of an ongoing project which sees Snaith documenting these sessions as a springboard or starting point for further studio-based work.

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