Artist Q&A
What is your artistic background?
I began painting in Auckland, NZ, where I met my painting tutor, Matthew Browne. He was such an inspiring tutor that he eventually suggested I apply for a Fine Art degree at the Elam School of Art, Auckland University. Although I had a very fulfilling year at Elam, I had to leave NZ and return to the UK in 2014. That same year, I accepted an offer from Goldsmiths, University of London, and spent three challenging but most wonderful years there. After obtaining a First Class Honours BA in Fine Art, I continued studying at the BALTIC + Northumbria University at the Master’s level and also studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) as an exchange student.
What is your current practice and the thought behind it?
I primarily paint, but what I learned at both Elam and Goldsmiths is to work beyond a single discipline. I believe in sharing and the power of collective voices. My work often reflects this belief, as I create constellations of various media. This approach has encouraged me to actively participate in and organize group exhibitions from early in my art studies. In addition to being an artist, I have organised and curated several exhibitions, including the “On the Threshold” and “Planetality” series, which question our relationship to others and the environment, the “Encounter” series on climate change and sustainability and ‘Reflection’ after the Covid. I Last summer, I started the Redcar Summer Exhibition to raise awareness of the social issues we currently face.
Can you tell me about your submitted work, ‘Closer to Heaven’?
The painting/cutout is based on a photo from the 1930s when constructing skyscrapers became a strong drive, and the competition to build the world’s tallest building was fierce. I use this image as a symbol of human desire. I replaced the ridiculous-looking hats in the photo with more recent tall buildings, indicating ongoing development and devastation to our environment, using a lone frog to represent nature. The painting is incorporated with a performance by four artists wearing costumes similar to the painting, but with hats made of tree branches or corals. They walk among the crowd, symbolising our hope to reverse the trend and coexist harmoniously with nature.
Closer to Heaven
Mixed Media/Cutout on Board
60cm x 80cm
2024
£500
About Samba & I
What is the group’s background?
Samba, three old women in Japanese, was formed by three of us who all went University in our 50th and studied Fine Art amongst young UG students. We met through the TESTT studio space in Durham and worked together through group exhibitions focusing on Sustainability and Climate Change. However, we couldn’t realise our first solo exhibition planned in 2019 due to the Pandemic. Last year, for the first time since the Pandemic, we worked together on the Knitted Christmas Tree project and finally, we are putting this small but for us, very significant Samba solo exhibition, Precarious.
Can you tell me about your motivation for creating the work, ‘Under the Cloud’ Miria Miria?
When I was a young girl in primary school, our teacher brought a thick photo book to class and asked us to pass it around. I can’t even remember exactly what year I was in, but the intense sensation and fear I felt from the images in that book remain vivid decades later. Most of us only managed to look at a couple of pages before passing it along. The page I saw showed a girl about our age, her face blackened and burned, covered in thick, horrible keloids. Her skin and flesh, melted by the intense heat, hung from her bones like a slimy substance, slipping down toward the ground.
It was a brave—and some might say controversial—decision for our teacher to show such shocking images to young children. But I appreciate it deeply. One clever, somewhat cheeky boy in the class proudly announced, “The Americans used the atomic bombs to end the war sooner.” That’s what most of us were made to believe until recently, when formerly strictly confidential U.S. documents revealed another perspective.
Hiroshima is not far from my hometown, and I’ve visited the Atomic Bomb Memorial Park and museums many times. The park is always filled with tens of thousands of paper cranes, folded by people praying for the dead and for world peace. There’s a simple memorial stone overlooking the Atomic Dome, one of the few structures that survived the blast because it was made from steel and stone, unlike the typical Japanese wooden buildings. Inscribed on the stone are the words: “Please rest in peace. We will never make this mistake again.”
My work ‘Under the Cloud’ was triggered by the film Oppenheimer, which received numerous Oscar awards. The movie focuses on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who pushed for the creation of the atomic bomb and urged President Truman to drop two different types of bombs on Japan. The film portrays him as a complicated hero. But watching the scene of scientists and officials cheering for Oppenheimer’s success transported me back to my primary school classroom—to that deep fear and sadness I felt as a child. The river that once carried the burned bodies of those who sought water in desperation after the bombing now hosts tourists rowing boats, unaware of its history. Today, even young Japanese people admire the movie’s actor, celebrating him without fully understanding the legacy of his character.
That’s when I knew I had to create this work. I want people to remember and not forget what the Japanese people experienced: the horror of nuclear bombs, and the horror of humanity’s disregard for others.
Under the Cloud
Pastel on Canvas
1300cm x 180cm
2024
TBD
