Could you begin by providing us with an overview of your practice and what inspired you to explore sensory methods of reconnecting with material and immaterial surroundings?

My practice involves an ongoing mediation between material (the ‘stuff’ of my world) and the place and time that I find myself in. This essentially means that any meaning in my practice derives from the way that engaging with a particular material allows me to locate myself meaningfully within the world. My practice has undergone a journey from trying, unsuccessfully, to find a ‘voice’ through the abstraction of painting, to one where I now seek authenticity through engaging directly with material. For someone (like many people) who finds that self-consciousness gets in the way of truly experiencing the world, I believe that engagement with the world on a tactile level allows a purer, more authentic response. My Art is now less me, my ego, telling my story, but more a ‘humming along’ with what I encounter in the world. If that makes sense…

In your statement, you mentioned that you see yourself as a mediator or material choreographer. Can you elaborate on this line of thought?

All material comes with its own agency and story. I am not interested in imposing myself onto the material, but rather try to gently manipulate and allow it to move into a relationship. This is quite difficult to do, especially as the ego always wants to butt in, but for me it’s important to try and recognise when this is happening and try and let go. Clearing the way, creating an uncluttered environment or fresh context is one way of doing this, or by combining certain materials/shapes/situations in new ways, thus creating the conditions for new understandings to emerge or relationships exposed and made apparent.

It is very easy for that voice in the head to jump in with its petty assertions, and yet when I succeed in allowing the material to have equal agency in the conversation, the work produced is much more multi-dimensional and authentic. There is no point trying to inflict my will on a material; invariably, it doesn’t work and becomes painful for both me and the work I’m attempting to allow into being. It’s very important that the innate properties, or ‘voice’, of the material is given precedence.

I’m struggling at the moment with some drawings, I keep trying to ‘realise’ an idea in my head by using the materials in a certain way, and it keeps falling flat. Unfortunately, despite the hours and hours of trying (I can be very stubborn), I know that the only way of achieving authenticity is going to be by starting all over again, a bit like an explorer having to go back to the beginning of the journey and striking off in a different direction.

Trusting the creative process is key, one thing I have learned is that something ALWAYS happens, not necessarily what I wanted when I embarked on the journey (in fact hardly ever), but if I’m open enough to the poetry of what’s going on, keep my hand and mind open rather than forcing myself onto a material, then exciting things can occur.

After years of teaching secondary school students, you've transitioned to your own artistic practice full-time. How has your pedagogical background of encouraging "independence, invention and engagement" influenced your current work? 

My pedagogical approach came directly from my own experience as an artist, and ultimately, as these things go, my experience in the classroom fed into the kind of artist I am now.

I dropped Art as a formal subject at school when I was 14 years old, and only took it up again in my early twenties when I began my first degree course. This gave me freedoms that I think are maybe less available to people whose development followed perhaps a more conventional route. I know that many students going to Art college find that they have to unlearn all the expectations of school, which often lies in a very narrow interpretation of what Art is. 

I always found the objective conventions of artistic representation taught in school left me feeling self-conscious and insecure, and because although I could certainly work out what was expected, it was only when I started my first degree and was introduced to a materials-based methodology that I found a more authentic voice.

When my teaching was at its best, it was like a two-way conversation. I could certainly show students techniques and skills, how to use certain equipment, for example, a little like learning vocabulary in a language, but what I couldn’t do was tell them what to say. What was important to me was that the students could use that vocabulary to express their unique selves, to reinvent a world for themselves, or to reflect their unique experience.

Invention and innovation are some of the vitally important skills that an Arts-based education can uniquely develop, allowing that right-brain thinking-outside-the-box mindset that is not necessarily always fostered in mainstream secondary education, at least in the UK. 

Your practice is deeply rooted in our fundamental grasp reflexes: the Palmar and the Plantar reflexes. When did you first recognize this connection between our basic human reflexes and artistic creation? Can you describe a moment when this realization crystallized for you?

Actually quite recently. One thing I find is that I exist very much in my head, and as such, I can become quite remote and cut off much of the time. Very often, I am just not very present. Movement and making are essentially ‘self-soothing’ strategies to stop me digging myself a neurotic hole, and I have found that being either in my studio (making) or gardening or indeed any physical act takes me out of my head and back into my body, and by extension back into the physical world.

I did this for years without really consciously realising it, and yet when I did my MA and I was encouraged to reflect on my practice, I could see that it was an important aspect of my practice. It seems like I have spent most of my adult life trying to find a way of locating myself somewhere meaningful, both geographically and emotionally. ‘Finding myself’ might be a bit of a cliche… but that impulse feels like it taps into something very old inside me, very fundamental - something that starts in the pre-conscious body. I wonder if we are all deep down trying to get back to that uncomplicated primal state?

Your role as "assembler and disassembler" suggests that creation and destruction are equally important in your practice. Can you elaborate on this dual process? What can one teach us that another cannot?

For me, the semantics of this is quite important. ‘Assembler and disassembler’ feels much more fluid, more ‘flow-state’ than the dualistic connotations of ‘creation and destruction’. Of course, I understand why this dichotomy is often cited as important, but I suppose I am uncomfortable with the finality of the word ‘destruction’. ‘Creation’ is great, it is what all beings are continuously engaged in, whether we realise it or not, the more of this the better! But ‘destruction’ feels so final, so blunt, so negative, so backwards.

Just as we perceive everything as a ‘floating world’, I understand my practice as part of a continuum, a process that takes me from one idea/material/ relationship to another. Within this process, relationships are established, but these relationships can very quickly evolve, or ‘morph’ - dissolve even - as circumstances and subjective understandings change. My studio is full of things I have made that have felt for a while to be ‘finished’ or ‘arrived’, only for the light or context to change my understanding of what is happening and for me to realise that they are still in a state of ‘becoming’. Or stopping points on the way to somewhere else. So very often that particular arrangement of materials (which is very often how I think about my work) can be dis-arranged and re-formed. 

Again, I suppose that can all sound a bit vague, but it’s actually a really fun and liberating way to work. When I was teaching, a common anxiety amongst my students was around the idea of completing a ‘final piece’ - in fact, very often this was what was expected of them within the curriculum- but I baulked at this way of seeing the creative process, as very destination-focussed. As soon as you let go of this idea, and understand that making ALWAYS generates thoughts/ideas and new possibilities - notions if you like - it takes away some of the anxiety and just becomes a world of endless possibilities.

Please tell us more about the submitted work titled "Keep Long Enough to be Certain". What is the conceptual foundation behind this sculpture?

I’m not completely sure of where to start. So, this is a prime example of a piece of work that has evolved in response to the affordances of specific materials and place, and circumstance as well, rather than consciously created. Any concept essentially emerges through the process of making, so really to explore that, it may be useful to know how it evolved. 

I wanted to create a piece of work in response to a particular place - in this instance, a piece of woodland in the early stages of regeneration. The natural materials of that place were over-abundant and certainly didn’t need me to interfere… however, the material that jumped out at me was the plastic tree guards that had been placed everywhere within the wood, each one representing a potential for new life. There is an innate paradox that lies at the heart of the use of plastic within this context of natural renewal; however, on a formal basis, I saw the creative potential in this paradox - the mechanical uniformity in their engineered production belied the creative chaos of their purpose and surroundings.

I have done a lot of casting within my practice, and the internal characteristics of their form strongly pointed to the negative shape of their void (a little like a Rachael Whiteread sculpture). To fill this space with soil allowed me to think of it as a way of elevating growth above the ground, and from this, I created a series of growing sculptures (‘As Above’).

So, the pragmatics of display then kicked in - it became clear that the gallery that I was supposed to show the work in wouldn’t allow any living sculptures, so I then adapted the concept and took the living aspect away, leaving these hollow towers. Part of the response to the tree guards had been a recognition of their surface qualities, the ridges on the inside of the tubes were reflected on the outside of the columns… and I decided I could use this material to create some collagraph prints. On a whim, maybe, or a reaction to the verticality of these lines, I decided to etch ‘stopping points’ into these lines to subvert the linear quality… and the motifs became circular, which when joined up then triangulated… an allusion to mapping perhaps, another nod to the idea of place. You can see the prints here.

Pragmaticism then added a new voice - I wished to exhibit the columns raised from the ground and decided to make some empty-sided plinths in order to emphasise this elevation. The plywood surface of these plinths had a linear quality which again I subverted by cutting lines across - reflecting the lines in the collagraphs - which again provided an allusion to triangulation, maps, and place. They also alluded to the concept of ‘joining up’, which was kind of happening all through the various strands of this body of work. This rather complicated process seems quite linear, but in fact, each step was very unplanned, and crucially, was made in response to what the materials demanded. 

So this is a very roundabout way of saying that the concept behind the work started with a very simple response to ‘materials of place’. The subsequent ideas, notions and meanings all spill out of the process and are developed subjectively along the way. In fact, this is where I feel very much that as an artist I am a collaborator in a process that involves myself (and all I bring to the story), with the materials of place (and all they bring to the story) and the viewer (and all they bring to the story). And so it goes on.

Your practice centers on repetitive acts of "(re)placing, (re)mixing, (re)combining." How does repetition function in your work – is it a path to discovery, a form of material meditation, or something else entirely? What emerges through this cyclical process that couldn't be found through singular acts?

I think that repetition lies deep in our body memory. On a very profound level, when stressed, we seek the soothing comfort of repetitious acts to ground us, bring us back to ourselves, and bring us into the moment. So, on a visceral level, I think it’s very significant, an innate human strategy that we fall back on subconsciously. But it’s also part of our cultural make-up, regardless of our heritage, we repeat motifs in pattern, song, movement, rituals … repetition is in our DNA as human beings.

So as part of my practice, it feels very natural, obvious even. It is, as you say, definitely part of a ‘path to discovery’ There is always a stage in the artistic process where I really don’t know what is going to happen,  I’m groping around in the dark a bit, it can be intensely nerve-wracking and stressful - but when I find something, or ‘stumble across’ something that seems to make sense, then my instinct is to do it again, say it louder, try that thing again and again, almost as if to test its veracity, its truth. It’s like I am testing a hypothesis which needs to be demonstrated again and again. And then, of course, one thing becomes many, which then becomes larger than the sum of its parts. ‘Material meditation’ is a really lovely way of putting it…

In the context of your artistic practice, how do you engage with the evolving relationship between human-made materials and the natural world, and in what ways do you challenge traditional notions of materiality to foster sustainable practices that minimize environmental impact?

Over the years I have developed a methodology which is very focussed on the idea of responding to ‘what is there’. There is no better way to become attuned to the world around you than to make Art work in response to it. This might be simply drawing from life - when focussed on an object or a scene, you enter into a relationship with that place or moment. There is a dissolving of edges and a porosity of being that emerges between the subject and the object. So that is why when you spend time focussed on something, the images and ideas that you have absorbed are then reflected in everything you see. And that essence of re-creation is extended to viewing or experiencing Art. Go and see an exhibition of Turner landscapes, and suddenly you find yourself noticing changes in atmosphere on the horizon, for example.

So on a personal level, working with the materials of place, handling different soils or grasses, or even bits of concrete or glass, makes me acutely aware of the physical, material world around me, regardless of whether that is a ‘natural’ environment or man-made. It brings me into relationship with those materials, and therefore brings me into place.

When I was making the work for ‘Out of the Woods’, I was acutely aware of the physical affordances of that environment - how vigorous all the growth was, especially in the spring, it was like there was a green force pulsating and pushing upwards out of the soil - but I was also aware of the man-made affordances of the plastic tubes - how on a practical level they were perfectly designed to protect the young trees from being consumed or broken by the fauna that existed in that space - but there was a paradox that lay in their man-made material and how when left in the environment the plastic didn’t break down, how it remained and would remain for countless generations unless removed. So it was by engaging with a New Materialist creative practice that I NOTICED and became AWARE of the affordances of that particular place in a way that gave me insights into the nature of the place I might not have understood otherwise.

I do have certain ‘rules of engagement’ - I try not to bring materials in that aren’t already there - that feels a bit like cheating - but there are times when I allow myself a certain contingent freedom in order to enhance or ‘bring out’ what is already there. So, for instance, in my piece ‘More than an Inkling’, the glass rods that I used were a material response to the plastic tree guards that reminded me a little of test tubes, but they also allowed me to draw lines of light into the natural space. But I do try and maintain a light touch, and any interference I make with place is very temporary. I walked through the woods only yesterday, and all trace of my collaboration has long since disappeared. 

Art and artists play various roles in the fabric of contemporary society. How do you see artistic practices advancing sustainability and social consciousness?

I believe that the culture we live in conspires to take us away from place, we find ourselves drawn deeper and deeper into a virtual world where the consequences of our actions on others and the natural world become more and more remote. We need to NOTICE our impact on the world in order to recognise our responsibility - and this, for me, is why a creative, sensitive materials-based engagement with the physical world helps foster personal growth, but also social responsibility.

My engagement with a New Materialist practice has really helped make me more attuned to the physical world, and more aware of the relationships that bind us. It also made me understand in a very real way how Art is uniquely placed to break down cultural boundaries, enhance our understanding of our interdependency with the world around us and gives us tools to understand difference and build connection. It really can change how we understand our world, it brings us back into the matter of the world … into what matters. 

What message or call to action would you like to share with our readers?

My message is simple - we need to STOP… just stop, take a look around us, and take note. We need to listen, look, touch - use our innate bodily senses to notice what we have and what we are losing every minute. BE PRESENT.

That would be a good first step. Trust the process, and the rest should follow.

Learn more about the artist here.

Cover image:

More than an Inkling by Charlotte Chisholm.

All images and video courtesy of Charlotte Chisholm.