Interview: Kate Rohde

If a picture equals one thousand words, then the first photograph that Makers of Melbourne snaps of sculptor Kate Rohde has this piece written. Looking down to admire the resin-stained floor of her Northcote studio, we spy feet encased in clog-like shoes so spattered with the detritus of her creative expression that they camouflage almost completely. It’s as if there is this person that has sprouted out of two seeds planted in the very concrete upon which we stand.

The urge to use this image to create the connection between the artist and her work – fantastical sculptures and vessels made with a psychedelic eye for colour and form – is irresistible, not least because of the obvious reversal: her zoomorphic sculptures balanced upon small paws serving as expression of her fascination with the natural world, while she herself stands upon feet given the appearance of art.

Kate: “I guess I kind of put all my energy in to making the work. It’s pretty consuming, in a way: I get a bit antsy if I don’t get something done, some way, in each day. At the end of the day, if I hadn’t ended up being an artist then I would still make work in some capacity.”

That she ended up an artist at all owes more to serendipity than concentrated intent. Raised in a “very un-arty, tradie family” in the Dandenongs, the young Kate segued a passion for arts and craft projects in to art school.

Kate: “I never had a strong direction. I was always open to opportunity and things that came up. So I just keep going, really: I still sometimes think about getting a real career, something that’s in the drop down menu that’s in the bank. I just imagined art school would be the hold music in my life until I did something else.”

Happily for lovers of her work, that “something else” never materialised. Instead, Kate has spent more than a decade perfecting an approach to expression that first manifested with her intense love for dramatically decorative arts inspired by her passion for Rococo sculpture – an era that still deeply informs her practice.

It has been, she admits, an obsession: that mix of animal imagery, the natural world and an unapologetic flamboyance lighting in her the fire of imagination that has given rise to Kate’s own unique signature.

What is intriguing in all of this is the apparent contradiction present between the basis of Kate’s art work and the element of control (self-expressed) that impacts upon her own nature. On the one hand there is Kate the sculptor daubing her vessels with ad hoc lumps of un-worked clay and dripping resin, on the other is Kate the facilitator expressing concern at the “clutter” of her highly organised studio space.

Not so much a conflict as a paradox, and one of which Kate is very much aware. It serves as the basis for the dramatic push and pull that engenders so much of the artistic tension that draws observers in to her creations.

Kate: “Deep down I always want to be more crazy and more out of control, but deep down there is a part of me that can’t. Stephen Bush, locally, is one of my favourite artists and, the way he paints… He lets these areas be completely random and other areas that are controlled and structured and I guess that’s what I do in my work: let some areas go unconscious – dumping clay and not doing too much to it, and then the other areas that you really work it up, getting that really fine detail and finish.”

Her unique approach has garnered plenty of fans, resulting in an inspired exhibition of flora with designer florist, Cecilia Fox, as well as ongoing projects with fashion designer, Alexi Freeman and fashion super duo Luke Sales and Anna Plunkett of Romance Was Born (Kate’s work is currently for view as part of the ‘Express Yourself: Romance Was Born’ exhibition at the NGV).

Along with her ongoing relationships with Pieces of Eight Gallery and Karen Woodbury Gallery, and her three-day-per-week art technician role at a Melbourne private school, these are all relationships that keep Kate's work rate at a constant high hum. It is a productivity she enjoys, though focus is maintained on keeping some free space should an unexpected proposal stoke her creative will.

It’s a well-maintained balance – chaos and structure poised in life as it is in her art. Requiring constant recalibration, Kate nonetheless appears as someone for whom predictability could breed a feeling of malcontent.

Kate: “It’s always a learning process and that’s what keeps me interested – that ongoing acquiring of skills and learning of new processes. Everything I make I want to live with and I would want to have around me, and then it’s a benefit if someone else would like to have that in their lives as well.”

Interview: Lucy Hardie

An artist is quickly identified by the way that they present themselves to the world and how they interact with their surroundings.

This is definitely the case with fine artist Lucy Hardie, who Makers had the pleasure of meeting recently for coffee at the Black Cat café; where the bohemian interior was a perfect match for Hardie's delicate aesthetic.

Immaculate Heart 2014 - Ink and metal leaf on cotton paper by Lucy Hardie

Based in Melbourne, Hardie tells us that she’s only recently returned to the city after time spent in nearby Ocean Grove. Although not such a long distance to travel, Ocean Grove and Brunswick Street couldn’t be further apart in terms of creative output and she confides that she’s happy to have settled into a more artistic neighbourhood.

Lucy: “When I was little I was inspired by the black and white line drawings that accompanied my favourite fairy tales.” 

We’ve ordered drinks and Lucy has begun to explain her art: incredibly detailed compositions of light and dark texture created with layers of fine lines and dots, carefully drawn onto cotton-based paper. The resulting work is romantic and dreamy, with a strong emphasis on the female figure. 

Lucy: “I was really inspired by the illustrative style of Vali Myers, who created the most finely detailed drawings. I taught myself to draw by looking at her work.”

Myer’s influence on Hardie’s work is striking, with both women working with pen, ink and gold leaf.

Salomé 2013 - Ink on cotton paper by Lucy Hardie

Although she has spent most of her life drawing, Lucy only started to seriously consider art as a career once she was in her early twenties

 Lucy: “I always thought of myself as artistic but never thought of myself as creative, but I think that’s only because I never saw art as a realistic option to pursue while I was growing up. I think that’s because people say, ‘Artists don’t make money, what are you going to do with your life?’ I always thought, ‘why the hell am I good at drawing, why can’t I be good at maths’. I didn’t really see the point of it, it was always more of a hobby.”

It was around the age of 22 that the artist decided to make the push. It was her sister that called her out, questioning as to why someone with such a beautiful body of work hadn’t thought about exhibiting.

Knocked back by a few galleries, the self-taught artist found her work accepted in to an artist-run space, staged the exhibition and was astounded to sell out on opening night. It was all the reinforcement she needed that this could in fact be a viable career pathway – that hers was not a talent that ought be taken for granted.

In 2010 at the age of 26, Lucy returned to school to complete a Bachelor of illustration. Although there had been previous attempts to enroll in other courses, she states frankly that she “never really followed through”. The decision to return to University came about after a brief period spent in Austria under the tutelage of US artist, Philip Rubinov Jacobson.

Mary 2012 - Ink on cotton paper by Lucy Hardie

Lucy: “We connected online because I’d asked him if he could recommend any courses to me, since I’m really interested in artistic technique, and that’s not really focussed on at Fine Art school, where it’s more about concept and philosophy. He suggested his course and I said, ‘done’. I was there for four weeks; it was an intense course and we were painting everyday. It was amazing to be surrounded only by artists, only talking about art. Before that I had always loved art, but it was only after I arrived in Austria that I realised that this is what I’ve been looking for my whole life.”

With study well and truly behind her and the recent move back to Melbourne, Makers is intrigued to know what possible influence this may have on her future creative output.

Lucy: “I’m starting to bring in more structure with [pictures of] buildings and things like that. But I think my work will always have a feminine feel to it. On my trips to Melbourne I would go past these factories that just seemed like they were in a different world, areas with no roads around them that only the train goes past. You can see these tiny little buildings with ladders going up them and smoke coming out of turrets - I felt so inspired and took many photographs, they’re like world unto themselves."

It seems the fairy tale influence hasn’t left her completely.

You are Here 2014 - Ink on cotton paper by Lucy Hardie 

lucyhardie.com

Interview: Phillip Adams

“I like that edge.  I may be getting closer to that edge with each work I create.”

- Phillip Adams

Phillip Adams is a complex man upon which to get a grasp. Not an understanding of his drive, per say. That particular characteristic resonates as clearly as his otherworldly choreography. Indeed, the acclaimed dancer and choreographer, founder and director of ground breaking dance and performance company, BalletLab, and visual and performance artist is dedicated to artistic expression in a way few allow themselves to be.

It is his intent that leads to questions as one struggles to place the two parts of the man: on the one hand is the gorgeously welcoming host and conversationalist pouring tea from a delicate pot to serve up alongside morning tea of scones; on the other, the artist who demands what can appear to be a Machiavellian sense of control over his audience.

Find the evidence in a summation of his provocative works:

 And All Things Return To Nature Tomorrow, a work staged at the Melbourne Theatre Company following two years of research on cults, required the audience to remove their clothes in a recreated science lab and “be naked” with the artist for an hour as they shed themselves to become “abducted” by an environment and “transported” to another planet.

The rethinking of his childhood involving hypnotism of part of an audience for his theatre work, THUMB, reconnected participants to lost memories of their past while taking them through experiences of scale inspired by the mythology of stories like Tom Thumb, Jack and the Beanstalk and James and the Giant Peach.

Aviary image courtesy of BalletLab

In all of this he is very much presents as the puppeteer holding the strings.

 Phillip: “I think there is a slight manipulator in me – a provocation. Allowing people to have this jolt of experience as opposed to the seated structural viewer. I love that engagement when you push through the fourth wall and, without that, the artwork cannot exist. It has to activate you and it has to activate it.”

The ‘it’ of which Phillip speaks is the central core of the creative embryo. At this time in his career – having already achieved so much as a dancer and choreographer on the international stage – Phillip’s deep dive in to the visual arts has essentially become a kind of self-conducted psychoanalysis.

The theory is not one that he disputes.

Phillip: “There is a sense of anxiety around all of my work… that feeling that something may go wrong. I like that edge. I may be getting closer to that edge with every work I create.

The “Hitchcock-ian” element – Phillip’s own term – is in the artist’s desire to drag his audience down in to the depths of self he is determined to explore.

It is a one-in, all-in approach that begins to make sense as one understands the method in the madness – that his drive to reimagine his past could fall in to the category of self-indulgent nostalgia without the presence of an audience invested enough to aid in igniting the work’s reimagination.

After all, the demanding tenant of true art is that it offer new insight. Without that, it is less a creative expression than an insipid repainting of moments in which life’s significance has already long passed.

Phillip: “There are so many layers to my work and sometimes it’s hard to find where it all fits. You just have to allow it and love it or hate it. There is no definition of queer culture, but this feels as decidedly queer behaviour patterning – meaning, ‘an odd set of rules and strange and other unorthodox practices’. If my audience can’t engage and experience it then the work doesn’t live in the present.”

The interview comes to a close and Phillip rises from his chair to move his still impressively beautiful dancer’s physique for our camera’s gaze. In his well-cut suit against the backdrop of his Dr Ernest Fooks-designed house, he is the perfect reimagining of the boy that grew up in the pre-fabricated, post-war architecture house in the wilds of Papua New Guinea.

He, the idea. And us, the witness to land the perception of his created reality.

Phillip: “Obviously there is a deep desire for the ritual in everything that I do. I’ve become not what I was and, at 50, this has become Act II. The works are an avenue to explore, to understand how I play the second part of my life out.