Audiovisual Cultures episode 46 – Arts Education, Practice and Disability with Dr Jacqueline Wylie automated transcript

hello and welcome to audio-visual cultures support casts and examines aspects of signed an image based cultural production I’m Paula Blair and today I’m in East Belfast and I’m just about to go and meet Jackie Wiley who’s an artist based in East Belfast my creative exchange studios so very lucky she’s gonna let me have a look in her studio we’re gonna record a chat about her work we’ll probably pick up on themes we touched on before to do with craft and value around art and issues around gender and disability in eard thanks so much for everybody who’s been sharing and engaging on social media and huge thanks to our patreon members please stick with us till the end to find out how to do all of those things tonight I’ll hand over to my tart with artists Jacqueline Wiley how do you like to identify it’s a tiered approach when they meet people using like face so to say oh I’m an artist and some people okay and then some people inquire you’re so I give them more information and it’s a bit like the Northern Irish thing I throw my castle which is a very sectarian very partisan area and so when I meet people I’ve got that Northern Irish thing where I say I come from Don gammon and they go oh I know done gallon we’re in zone or they say what school did you go to so I don’t think I’ve come from that I usually test and then sometimes I go through an entire conversation and nobody’s really inquired I know I did whereas if somebody’s interested I say I’m an artist and they say oh do you paint them so to most people I just say I’m a visual artist okay and then recently I finished doing the PhD so now I’m dr. Wiley and so I’m still getting to grips with when do I drop that little bomb in the conversation because I was an older woman I do find that people’s relations can be quite dismissive no taxi driver well what’s that what does that mean I said I’m a doctor philosophy what’s that what’s that he was pretty aggressive about it that’s all yeah I tend to be a bit out there so it’s like when to use it when is it useful like when I’m applying for jobs and things like that and dr. Wiley and when I’m doing art and I want my work online or four things I’m chuckling why lame for me but most of the time I’m Jackee so it really does depend on but yeah basically I’m a visual artist because I work conceptually it’s very ideas based and he’s socially engaged practice so it’s very much responding to issues around gender any age and disability those are the sort of topics and the ethics no my PhD was looking at social media my how are you social medium I’m really interested in the ethics of social media use so that’s the simplest way of describing what I do so there’s quite a lot of various we can think about because a lot of what you do seems to fall between fault lines of or at least it pushes up and twelve lines between arts and crafts yes you do quite a lot of knitting yes and you work yeah exactly and that appropriate nail for net talk that’s netted by my mum today all right that’s nice I like my school uniform was gray so I sort of see that lovely that salute like school uniform grey it’s lovely very good tensions I like that okay yes everybody usually compliments my mum’s tennis thank you you can see that because we don’t really think of knitting as an art form I think it is if I grew up my grandmother my mom’s mom used to knit beautiful dolls and all sorts and I thought think they are works of art I’ve still got many of them and the clothes and things that my mom does you I think their artworks so do you would have challenges then when you incorporate netting into artwork thinking your website you would suggest that you pinned with netting yes yes I call them lifted paintings I do large uniform they’re also like a series they’re all the same size so they usually like 86 centimeters by 86 centimeters I love the sort of size of a piece of knitting that I can do in about a month this time until I start getting border but I was just really interested in the fact that certain practices were gendered like high art you know the sort of ideas around the history of certain materials like oil painting was seen as high art and bronze casting to them textiles were seen as feminine but if you go back in history they weren’t it was men who did textile wow it was very noticeable I was knitting I’ve always knitted and I remember on my foundation art course she just not liking the fact that I was asking and I did a piece a small square like a Josef Albers square that’s what started it all admitted to small netted square with all grace she is blue and she just said but it’s not art is it because I put it in my sketchbook and they didn’t like the fact that I was doing this and then I was being pushed to apply to go to our College and they said well you all do textiles won’t you and I felt that the women were being pushed into doing if you were interested in art you do textiles a lot of one more hat we thought they didn’t have that kind of ego they didn’t feel confident enough to do fine art and I said I wanted to do fine art I even had a cheater saying about how it was a real shame I wasn’t going to do textiles because it was a real loss it was wasting my time for endo died also studied archaeology one of the essays that I did was on textiles and I really loved the fact that now they’re starting to I think I have a book somewhere about Coptic knitting I did a project in the Walker Art Gallery those four artists went in to look at the collection I make work in response to what was in the collection and I said can I look at knitting and the curator said we don’t collect netting and I was all like oh you don’t collect you don’t value it no no no it was too valuable in the past then they would attract them and remake them so then I started looking at shoddy and I just loved that word shoddy you know because something seems as shoddy material but it was actually valued so it was recycling I’ve always been interested in the history of textiles the way we value materials and how that’s changed in the past and so yes it wasn’t seen as our fine art practice and I got that very much when I was at foundation and then looking at works paying tank it was all the modernist stuff the kind of Jackson Pollock in France applying Sola which I think was at Stella Frank Stella Sol LeWitt nor leases we worked so I started making knitted pieces that killed or referenced painters one time in university I had a tutor come when he said they had to do a tutorial he said but I’m a painter I can’t talk about textile and I said can you not respond to it as a painting anyway oh I think I’m sort of sat back he was too I said respond to as if it was a painting and then he could talk about what I was doing the mark making and the way it was constructed and the shape of it yeah it’s like there was a block there when I find something like that that’s what I liked Wario aiya and so somebody said there’s a bit of a performative element to what I do because I’m making work that it’s deliberately pushing expectations and I quite like that I mean that’s why I like doing the research in social media because I’m in the 50s and they don’t expect me to know anything about using a mobile phone and using social media a few times people have said oh oh you’re on Twitter and I’m like yeah and Twitter oh you’re on Instagram and how many followers do you got and then I would say how many followers I’ve got but you’ve got more followers than I have you know that sort of thing and I like that even thinking about social media because I know you’ve incorporated social media and your Twitter followers and artwork that is displayed there must be a tension between feeling pressure to use social media to push your persona as an artist and your works very social media but also you’re crossing that boundary and you’re using it as art practice and as a platform do use it for all of those things or didn’t you know this is what I ended up writing about in my PhD thesis because I started off interviewing people who were using social media and I tried to get a wide range of Ages because I started focusing into digital natives and digital immigrants so I’m a digital immigrant because I remember a time before the Internet and the for social media and now we’ve got digital natives who’ve grown up with it and I kind of found in a couple of articles there was like a cutoff date of our own 1980-1981 when someone born after that time is it digitally yes they’ve never known anything like life without it and so even if they choose younger people do actively choose not to engage with it and that’s what was interested in the people that I interviewed some people are engaging with it some work and it wasn’t an age thing necessarily and then I got people to talk about why they were getting involved in it and like as I say some people didn’t like the fact that they were showing too much of their work whereas other people were very happy could see the line between using it to promote what they were doing and they would show teasers of our performance or an event they were involved in they wouldn’t show the work itself because then they were concerned about people not coming to an exhibition or not coming to a performance and so I ended up looking a lot at performance on my first interview between that about it and I find that was a really interesting parallel talk about how performance artists feel about how important it is for people to be there and the present when the performance is happening so I thought there was something like that happening with social media and I just felt that it was a whole new genre are a place and a platform for making art so that’s why in my research I was trying to identify artists who were using it so it divided into the yes artists were using it to promote themselves and I will do that and then there are artists who are actually using it as a ground for their work it was a artist who now I can’t remember seeing what border bumping and he made work about the mobile phone and the fact that when does a mobile phone pick up when you’ve gone you might go into France like he went to France but the mobile phone thought he was in Germany because it depends on where the what he called the tars are when it comes to Sicily call it border bomb pack and I like that that was art about the mobile technology itself so I sort of set out to make work about social media so that’s why I used the Twitter so I sort of made long letters of my Twitter profiles because I thought each day would be different because people would on the follow me knew people would follow me so the ideas each day it was a different piece of work and I turned it into a large text piece as well and put it on the wall and so it embodied something it was in ephemeral because I took screenshots of the people I was interviewing at all their Twitter profiles and like they’ve changed their profile pictures to change what’s on them I brought up issues about archiving Kaiser’s work archive I set out to make work about being on social media so then doing the PhD finishing it was incredible because I had far too much I had interviewed it people so I was analyzing their responses and then I’d done the literature search so I was talking about theories about social media and the internet and ethics and identity and place and then I also have my own practice so my own practice got almost written out of it it was so new and emerging I don’t think the PhD gives you the space to make work and to think about it and then make it again do you just have more time to do that so I did talk a little bit about my practice and I felt it really helped me I describe myself as a participant observer and the ethics really interested me towards the end of the PhD looking at tinder like dating site the dark aspects of social media I started looking at pornography because the legislation was changing and I was really struck by the fact that film the example I used was a film can be passed by the board classification as not x-rated but if you take a snippet of a picture of a film and then put it on social media that can be and so that effects artists you know what they’re sharing plus the fact that what you share on social media on the Internet is gonna be there for us like he told sterols she talks a lot about it’s gonna open live so those sort of aspects the fact that people sharing information that in ten years time or in a hundred years time how is that information going to be used I’ve been meeting people on dating sites and so I was making art around the conversations the online conversations taking screenshots so then it brings up issues of consent to use people don’t know that I’m copying it I then met a guy I’d met on a fetish dating website he was into robber so I met him and I’ve taken photographs of him no known him for about two years and on and off have the sessions with him dry stomping and I’ve gone to clubs in Dublin and in Cork it’s a whole world so I’ve really enjoyed it yeah give me Holies and then this year I’ve so been meeting people because I’ve moved here to Isabel fast and a meeting people in the community there’s a lot of loyalist band members here and I’ve become friendly with someone who’s in a lot of the bounds so I’m taking photographs and that’s what I’m gonna do this year take after him in all his regalia there’s a parallel there with the dressing up well I can’t I know there is well because some of the people that I meet on you’re into both I’m do you think then that’s there’s a sacred life he was telling me about when they join the lodge they go through initiation social culture at all homo culture homosocial so it homing social otter it’s all men all boys together my idea yes very majestic find a pin point over to something else yes but I would be very adverse to you exactly because a lot of no religious I think will be charged so I thought that that was very interesting my social media gives me a way into this but so I did last year I got a sign-up ground for a new camera which is brilliant and for new equipment some of the money was for some courses so I attended courses at Belfast expose so that’s been fantastic like I used to take photographs and if they were blurry I would check oh that’s a rubbish photograph and then they were saying no no I know a bit more about what I’m doing and I am able to appreciate now what to me what’s a good photograph you know what am I trying to achieve with my photography because I’ve been taking photographs since I was 14 yeah but I always used it more of a sketchbook kind of way of working my way into a subject taking photographs and then using motifs from the photographs to make work and so I never thought of them as works all right so then I’ve been printing things on juillet you know fine quality you know getting into the printing some of the courses were full Photoshop because of course I say because I’m a digital immigrant I mean I never learned how to use Photoshop or Lightroom or all that so so so I went on a couple of courses so now I feel a lot more comfortable I know how to size the photographs and how to added them and what I’m trying to achieve with them no I know I’m doing constructed photographs the ones I mean I’m meeting people and taking photographs of them they’re paranoid constructed photographs and then I’m also doing a lot of documentary photography because I’m going out and following the parades and taking photographs and the bonfires and all that sort of stuff and so that’s what I’m trying to do now because I want to do a photo book that’s the direction and kind of interested in so doing them not as like necessarily trying to print them up big because I have done that last year I printed some of these photographs really big like a old size and showed them in exhibitions just to test him to see how people responded to them but I really like the fact that you can build up a kind of narrative in a book because we looking at a lot of photo books now that’s what I’m realizing that’s what I think I really wanna do so there’s a course in Dublin core reading image so I’m applying for that but I’m also just trying to see where the work takes me yeah I think after the PhD after the level of theory and philosophy and so just to be back in the studio and just making work and as I say read em looking at some formal doing poetry and that’s tyre I tend to work the reading informs the ideas it’s been very much like after the PhD that was my goal for like five years and now it’s very tempting to put in another big project but I actually think I needed just time making new work and reading and like bought a house in East Belfast so it’s taking time to get used to living here does it feel like I’ve moved around a lot yes that was something I was going to ask because you were faced in Manchester for a long time and how was it firstly being under with an Irish person moving there and then having a life in Manchester and then coming back yeah well that’s why I think part of that High Line describing the work I’m doing documenting the bond because I sort of see myself as part of an Irish dysphoric I left school anyway 79 80 and that’s why at University there’s still the troubles so we were just encouraged to get out in Northern Ireland I went and I lived in Wales for about four years went to university there and studied archaeology history and archaeology and then I spent about ten years being an archaeologist I wasn’t an artist originally and I travelled around living in tents and then squats digging I had no plan no big career plans and then I ended up moving to Manchester partly because my partner I met him at university and his parents were in Manchester but I applied for a job in Macclesfield which is your side side so I lived for two years in Macclesfield working at the silk museum through the text is a studied archaeology and then did an MA in building conservation and that was my big passion was architecture and I think in another life if I’d been a boy an architect would be encouraged to go to school but this was a girl it was yeah I think you can take the only careers advice I got at school was take seven years to become an architect by not time you’d be married with children so I went okay then and so it was partly my not being persistent and not having but I come from a working-class back and I wasn’t encouraged to go I’m the only one in my father he’s going to use yeah so they think I’m a bit of a ball isn’t it but that’s a digression so I moved to Manchester to work as an archaeologist I’m and I ended up at the archaeology unit and the University worked there for two years that was great and then I did my MA building conservation and so a Goren recording all buildings and doing research documentary research and I loved it but I’d always had my interest in art but because it was not valued you know nobody encouraged me to go darn funny if I did apply to do foundation in Belfast and got accepted but I wanted to leave Northern Ireland so I went to university instead of going to taco so I like it so I worked there and then I did my art degree in stoke-on-trent I’d started doing a foundation course there as a mature student just get are died of my system and then got sucked in just again I was gonna do some pottery twice around certain classes and do some textiles and sewing and stuff and then got sucked in and then ended up no wonder my friends had to stoke and I went to visitor and talked to the tutors and they said you want to bring your portfolio I never soul encouraging and I took it down and I applied to a couple I got an interview at Goldsmiths I got an interview Chelsea didn’t get offered a place and then still controlled offered me a place so I thought just go I’m thirsty just get on with it just do it so fast knowing mm-hmm and I loved it and then I had a studio in Manchester at rogue studios yeah but I had part-time jobs so it was always very part time and I felt like I’d hit a point where it just wasn’t really again very far I’d always had the idea of doing the PhD and about 2000 I went down to London and talked to somebody at Goldsmith’s and they said yeah they would be interested in me doing and then that would have been about tax past I was doing a lot of knitting then just doing these big knitted pieces and then I started her by 2011 did a project with two of their artists it’s a very large building the B themt are in – oh oh yeah yeah we started doing this research a friend of mine ours friend is really into astronomy so she was talking about sundials so we started saying she said it’s a there’s a name for it but you know the bet in the middle of the sundial because the Sun hits it that’s what’s made my thunder it meant that a certain day and we took the summer solstice so wherever the Sun allowed that every year we marked the ours so we decided we would do this on social media as well so we had a Facebook page a Twitter page we had about 400 people following us on the day Guardian reporter turned up one was following us he said oh I find you I find you and the newspaper had done an animation of the damn thing they’ve done well and then there was a school a primary school were following us on Twitter I had never had anything that went viral yeah yeah so that was the kind of or intensive why I put together the proposal for the PhD to study this well what is happening on social media and then got it except I applied to Manchester because I was really quite happy just to stay there man to stand on it that didn’t get offered a place thank God for offered the place in Belfast because it’s a fully funded page thing so I moved I’d been in a long-term relationship and I had finished and so it was like a good time to move yeah like we’d split up for about five years before that and we had a lot of friends in common and go to openings and he’d be you know he’s an artist as well he’s an artist and a writer and we’d bump into each other and it was just so like just the idea of being in Balthus I my dad was ill so I came back to Belfast and was able to spend more time with my family so work died but yeah it was a big risk I thought long competed but I’d been coming back to visit my family regularly and I noticed that Belfast was becoming this sending interesting place to be are nice okay well why not and a husband a fantastic experience for me I have any access to a library again because I can Manchester I didn’t really have access to stuff and going to conferences I’ve never done that it was a whole world of going to things and then visual arts Ireland has been amazing so yeah they are so much more active in Manchester you just worked away in your studio and he doesn’t a small to stuff and you didn’t get to meet arts council people because guards casanova’s covers such and it was like up to Cumbria and it’s a huge area I had read some articles about high per capita artists here get more he’s bored it’s because there’s fewer artists I’m sorry it’s a brisk unlike now I’ve committed to staying here after finishing the PhD so it was five years doing the PhD with Corrections at the end and finishing at all I’m so we’re trying to make sense of it now like where do I fit into this art psychology I can now you make a living because it’s difficult at the minute I’ve got very little money coming in and I don’t have someone supporting me and I know that traditional model is I need people who come from middle to upper-middle class families and their parents will support them you know until they get with a gallery or get some kind of income and like I don’t have that kind of thing it can be very discouraging at times you know very worrying the end of the PhD I just ran out of money come here that’s because you end up having to get the extensions as my supervisor so I said well maybe I can get a part-time job and they said no no I’ll give you the extension because they only give you the extension on the understanding that you’re working full-time on the PC so if you’re doing like more than 16 hours a week they will give you an extension tonight it’s like trying to sort out five years later five years is a long time in the arm world things have changed and even the attitudes towards social media because when I started doing the research it was very sort of utopian oh isn’t this great but people understand now the problems with social media but that’s why I think the research that I’ve done is so relevant because looking at that ethics by designed and delivered a short workshop to some primary school kids here locally just getting them to talk about what social media platforms are they’ll do they know what the age limits are yeah because most unlike Facebook you have to be 50 I think that’s 18 no you know some of the higher or with parents concern no some of them did some of them I’m surprised that I’ve some of them were very well informed and if people strangers approached them trying to make Francis and what TJ and others were saying I want to talk to my mommy and I would discuss this with them who this person wasn’t what would you do if you’re being bullied who would you talk to I’m like a little bit more saying of yet they were being bully you know people have experienced bullying it’s a big important issue and then what’s happening is like some of the adults don’t understand yeah how important to say and I was kind of arguing that a lot of artists like teaching when I was doing PhD weren’t seeing the students activity on social media as part of their practice mm-hm and I was arguing that it that you need to engage with what these students are doing and saying usually it’s another aspect of the fact you know when you’re at our College we talk about you doing your artist statement and your CV but no they need to be talking about what is your social media the classical nine you still would say I remember a girl she was a girl in time and she was a curator and professionally inferring ambitious but she was posting pictures of herself like one time slumped on the you know with her friends like very very drunk mm-hm surrounded by heroes and I thought well if my potential employer so that they were so you know it’s it’s like managing yeah your profile and it’s not something that I’ve had to be very aware of like saying living in Manchester and working away there nobody knew who I was nobody knew I was doing yeah no I on social media I’m chatting to people across the globe and they do know who I am that’s what I liked about it it’s the access that you have to people is amazing but then you have to be responsible and careful because I fallen out with people and people have disliked comments that I’ve made on social media and then that affects them when I’m applying for things they don’t like something like maybe being critical of something on social media I have to learn to be a little bit bit more diplomatic with my opinion especially at night when I’ve had a glass of wine I know know personally in my practice it’s not just about making the work it is about establishing relationships with people curator salaries what came out of this thing on Tuesday when I went to the VA I talked was I don’t really know where I am and this trying to maintain relationships with people I don’t think I’ve been very consistent or I’ve had like a clear idea of what I’m supposed to be doing there’s probably been opportunities that I missed out on but I never saw it as a career choice I was just going from one interesting thing to the next and I did the Aces scheme got funding from Arsenal Northern Ireland that was like 2015-16 and that was really good yeah and I was saying then one of the best pieces of advice was like I was just doing a big project and then a we won and they said no you’ve got to stop doing that you’ve got to be more strategic and they were saying you need to be looking at which gallery so you want to be with me but I’ve got galleries I’d like to be with but I’m there’s no way I’m gonna get it you can’t think right you got to be more clear about where your work fits and don’t be approaching galleries that yeah there’s no way they’re not going to show you a kind of work but you need to be more clear about establishing relationships with people who are interested in the kind of art you know the way that you work working at them and I’ve not been not strategic yeah I suppose you’re right there that kind of person or you’re not and I wouldn’t be that sort of strategic person it’s just well I need a job so whatever comes along please but some people just seem to have the knock but yes they do they don’t pay they can really see how it works whereas I feel sometimes there’s like social cues it’s almost like a form of autism or something I go to openings and I can see there’s there’s a lot of subtle social cues going on yeah and I feel a lot of it goes over my head and I think a lot of people feel the same way as I do I’ve talked to artists who’ve like maybe being really really successful and have had a run of really big shows and doing really well and then six months later or maybe two or three years later saying you know I was really depressed and it was so much stress and so much pressure and you only see oh look they’re at a big opening and they’re drinking champagne at a nice suit but they’re saying yeah but couldn’t pay my bills and I’m supposed to be like yeah it’s a performance and I I think that I sometimes let myself down because I don’t do the performing and then I allow people to have prejudices about me and act on those prejudices and I think I’m beginning to realize yeah I need to manage that side of things a bit better I mean no it takes time I don’t think there’s easy answers to any of this sort of because you’re still trying to be inauthentic you know be the person yourself my art practice is only just a subset of me I’ve got my family and I’ve gone interests that aren’t nothing to do with art where some people just live hungry and that’s it’s thanks everyday I’ve never been nothing the person is saying I’m actually volunteering interests they’re doing a research project I’m learning Irish have been doing some Irish lessons and I got funding to do research into census returns during the war like Irish speakers in East Belfast Protestant Irish speakers and so I’m trying to do a day a week doing that see I did census research in the eighties well that was all on microfiche going through like card indexes and stuff worse this we’re doing it all online an excel sheet spreadsheet so it’s good for me to update my research yeah you’ll keep that – like this is so I just hope that something will come out of it as long as I can keep earning a bit money to take over it’s a crazy time at the minute with the branches and everything so uncertain especially here and in academia because a lot of the funding is European the universities are going tomorrow we get funding here in the studio we get some arts kinds of money and it’s been frozen last couple years and that’s an achievement even the fact that it’s frozen yeah because a lot of other organizations that she had to deal with cars and we’ve constantly because I’m not writing or the studio wraps and so we have to talk about how do we keep the cops teen and how would we deal with if in this round of funding if we get a cut because we’ve everything’s pared back as it is and it is quite scary climate with so many of the studios and art spaces having their funding entirely pulled when you’re thinking well he’s gonna be next and what about next year there’s still no Stormin and there’s still no budget and lot of practices because we’ve got that double whammy like you see we’ve got the banks of things bad enough but the fact that’s Donna that’s one of the big ass but you know that you’d asked of like coming back to northern I’ve I felt very much like I was like 1819 when I left yeah and I just walked away I was like this this place yeah it’s just horrible the fact that came back I gotta come to terms with a lot stuff that’s happened I don’t understand a lot of the politics because I lived in Manchester and I was used to working in a diverse work environment and we were getting training in gender awareness you know all the new legislation coming in I’m not used to living somewhere so white yeah so this is how I relate to the politics you know issues are an abortion issues around came our age well friends of my name I’m just about my I’ve gone to weddings and stuff and then to move here and people are still arguing over cakes a bit of a step back yeah because living in England I myself I just feel so frustrating that things are still so behind here when I come back yes I’m constantly monitoring yes what’s going on exactly I’m feeling this sense of urgency and when I find more and more that MPs over in England are taking seriously here they’re starting to listen because they can save I think if one good thing comes by the practice of actually is that the DEP you’ve had a public platform and people are seeing them from what they are yes a lot of MPs especially in England are becoming very sympathetic with what people are stuck with over here yes they see this I will you get the politicians you vote forward but that’s the problem it’s it’s not really that easy over here because people are voting for certain reasons and there’s power military involvement still and people are not voting because they’re sick of it all and you know so it’s a very narrow slice of the population that’s actually casting a vote it’s a very complicated scenario yes that’s not really gonna change I need something because recent in the last couple of weeks about the community worker in this area yeah and that was UVF involvement and I think it’s actually challenging a lot of people aren’t happy yeah happened and how it happened it’s revealing to people that a lot of it was around drugs that people were in debt because the paramilitaries are selling drugs to people so like you say it’s there’s complications and I’m beginning to start to understand talking to people yeah we’ve got a long way to go there’s a lot of attitudes here which haven’t been shot like in England people who have been challenging stuff but you’re talking about – that things that have been happening over the last 20 30 years you’re not just like a groundswell it was here you feel like people just haven’t got beyond the basics and I feel it’s more similar to the Trump phenomenon the people are voting for him and I feel like can you see the same person and I guess because I find him totally repulsive but there’s a whole big section in America you really like that convinced like don’t you believe in the accept him and they think that he’s doing a good job and that’s what’s really scary because it’s the same here it’s the DEP I’m looking at these people are terrible both there’s a big section thing it’s trying to understand that and finding ways it’s very gently paying them to thicken slightly a wee bit questioning a tiny bit face up Kelly I lived in a nice part of Manchester I mean I’m still a rough place to live in there was high crime risk but there were a lot of artists and musicians in the air and I loved controls and so it was a very sort of bohemian area and where’s here even just the street environment nobody really looks after the street yeah people don’t seem to put a lot of effort into the environment they live in and don’t seem to understand the connection it’s a lot of the house feels like there’s a collective depression and there’s a collective trauma yeah I agree I with the place and it does pass down and not a lot of younger ones we’d incest all the troubles that’s in the past it’s not gonna do with us but it is and whether they realize it or not this is sort of harshness and kind of quite a brutal attitude where people got sealed off and protected themselves and then there are little communities and they have to do that to survive but it can be quite like to an outsider it comes across as quite harsh and judgmental but I can see why the origins of it I mean the good example was when the Khans water they spent about eight million doing up along the river is beautiful when I first moved here it was like a building site and I didn’t know what they were doing and now I walk along it regularly and it’s great it’s a lovely mean take but two years ago they started building a bonfire in the middle and the ballpark’s just ruined the place and they also they’re doing no the last you see when I was a kid they were just sticks and bits of furniture and you could stand round them neither and these pallets that they build the one hand when I shall or I come from was like 500 feet high or something right it was over on earth but yeah he’s a dream Nicholas di and so when it started to burn it was so hot we all had to move really for it so I just try and take photographs couldn’t even go I need these what about so had two

yes modest culture and you know if you stop them from tanging you’re denying culture I want to breathe so I’m sort of doing the photography by going to the marches and marching season and taking photographs it’s part of like normalizing yeah I think it needs to become not but it’s on the margins

because one of my little bug bears is when they have the period last year I went along and it was an evening period okay bye I took photographs and then when they went and I just thought yeah this is your environment arrested in this whole conversation right gentrification yeah because people talk about gentrification as a bad thing but I actually think that anything that makes an environment I don’t agree with pricing people I do work yeah which is what’s happened recently with the cultural quarter you know a lot of people are moving here it’s a lot of artists moving to East Belfast quite a few see you groups have moved over your life I think there’s a lot to be said for improving people’s environment making that feel safe because it does affect issues aren’t depression there is a reason why there’s like really high suicide rates yeah yeah there’s a really high depression and it is partly an environment it’s also the fact that there are no jobs and no security since I’ve come back I’m sort of trying to come to terms that sort of stuff living in Manchester’s living in a big city so you can kind of feel almost like a bit above a lot of that stop filming your logo he Mian on please enjoy we’re here I feel a wee bit more the interview I’m living on an interface ooh two very different cultures we’ve been side by side and every night again but when that community worker in my camera boy second name is when he was killed recently finally a lot of people came from short strong came over so brought the two communities together which is quite good so we need more good things not that somebody has to get killed something a few felt and she isn’t talking about being a member of the studio group it’s not really important as a practitioner and you said before by fitting may be quite isolated in Manchester yes high important is the studio environment working yeah it became more important to me when I first graduated and because I studied in Staffordshire you know still contract I moved back to Manchester so I haven’t been at college there and so I didn’t really know people know stuff so for the first year I thought oh I don’t need a studio I can just work my work is all about knitting in the domestics and why do I need you do and then I have all these big pieces working everywhere that was like tripping over stuff I applied and got into rogue there were two men she do groups in Manchester then can’t remember the name but it was a panting core it mainly painters and then rogue was the fact that it was mixed with sculptors musicians it was a bit of a mix so I went in there with almond knitted pieces and I got a studio there so I was there for like 15 years and the end the shoe do really did work it was somewhere to go to work if I was at home I’d put the washing machine on and do domestic things whereas here all I can do is like get a book I think about things and it’s and also for manufacturing I really likes cutting up big bits of wood and Nathan frames and stuff was really mourned so the space is really good but I do like the fact that you come in and say no normally it’s quite quiet here normally people put their heads even because there’s only about 12 of us and it’s quite small so it rogue I got friends with people so when I went to openings I knew people and curators would come in and we did a open studio every year it was like an open weekend so we have this mound Friday night party loads of people drinking and then over the Saturday and Sunday people come in and I would sell a lot of work it was really good I would say limited pieces but I also sold works on paper until the last word a lot of art and that’s what I want to work on now is having pieces mounted and you know in an accessible piece that you use many price pieces yeah for me it was really good because then it was an indication of what people liked it made me feel like I was meeting my audience yeah and then of course the social media came in and that’s what I liked the fact that you had this link with your audience because book to that listen you didn’t have that unless you were exhibit and then you go to an opening and then you’d meet people it was harder to network I did some studio visits but I got into The Hobbit I he was working part time so I spent half the week working and a half the weekend to see you and I sort of got out of the way I was induced you to visit I was exhibit but after doing it for about 10 years as I say I think I lost a wee bit of momentum about 2005 I started so I’ve had about maybe six or seven years after graduating felt like okay I’ve done exhibitions so well what was the next sort of stage and then start doing the PhD and then now it felt important to get our studio I was very disappointed that I didn’t get a studio as part of the PhD and there’s a lot of criticism yeah and I think they missed a trick there because when I was doing my degree we worked in with the ma long the PhD locked I could go over and just have like a week tutorial with something used to in these days I find not really valuable yeah and I couldn’t believe that they didn’t want us in there but they were missing ion so there was some reason why that they didn’t want that so I got a studio I was at Pollan I had a desk clerics a tiny space but we have a big space that we could use for performances and stuff and that was great because we ended up doing several performances together as a group I learned a lot from yeah it really really did that trying to really kept me going but I had put all my stuff in storage when I knew from Manchester so it had been in boxes so then I got it all moved I moved my studio decided I was going to stay here this is where all these boxes are still boxes from like open the boxes and finding things that would be books something and it’s been quite sort of emotional really I’m trying to process all this stuff but like I need the space but this is good here because it has the heating and it has Wi-Fi and I need that I think before if you repeat it you just need it black must be yeah I went to see you guy beacons studio yeah when I was tiny dog going yeah I read his biography it’s in there somewhere and that was really interesting and he just had this just mess and everything was lived on top like he be working on something throw it aside words because I do the knitted pieces I have a croquet area and have a piece and I’m trying to do more paint and getting back into doing that again same thing I’ve got a lot of watercolors and I’ve gone chalks and parcels and things like that you see years ago they’re all here on the past or something I think it’s really important to have a studio practice yeah because it changes you know what I say sometimes I’m working on photography so because the minute I’m working on 11 laptop like trying to add it photographs I’m gonna crash the memory thing so that’s a lot of the time is spent on that I very little time actually making under the minute it’s a lot of its admin yeah stop so the Internet’s really important emails yeah so have you changed awhile from when I started it’s so being part of this GT groups really important because I feel I learn a lot about what’s going on elsewhere and I think it does carry a certain amount of credibility when you’re talking to curators you’re applying for things and you say you know that the fact that you got space that they can come and visit yeah yeah I think it’s actually on the board yeah yeah and I suppose then you file your own website and hash to do your website so I need to do a wee bit more work and make sure it’s all linked up and then what I also set up I said I set up a patreon but I haven’t done anything with it because I need product I need to be a head what is a dimension turn off for what am I trying to sell here and I’ve also been selling a lot of stuff on eBay for years I didn’t do that’s my little side hostel because I buy things at car boots are example but some other stuff in there

stop with like knitting I’ve got so many like oh if I see in all glassware so then I’m thinking I set up an Etsy site so I’m thinking of trying to sell some new stuff on there and some work in Manchester with a gallery from COMSOL I never sell work through them but like here I’m not with the gallery and and that’s how I think things have moved on so I look want to just sit here waiting for somebody to come and buy I need to get my turn sounds don’t you need to survive you know you’re not just making things for people that go isn’t that lovely and interesting and then move on you want things that people can actually have in their home we kind of do both and this is what they were talking about so if you’ve heard this ecology I make large pieces last yeah a knitted piece that was my degree work I had to take it off and just really start taking it off but that was it feet by 8 feet and there was three of those so they’re in there so that’s my degree show work in the box like saying the photography is a good example like I will do small prints and I will saw those quite cheaply but I want to make big prints I like the G like prints um museum-quality yeah and I do see the distinction between not making most of those knitted pieces were as I say bike 3 feet by 3 feet 8686 but I’m working on halfway through one which is going to be like a really really big one and I was working on that all the way through the PhD so just doing a wee bit every okay I need to get that finished yes but that would be wouldn’t the domestic piece it would puffed me her a big solo show so I want to do a series of those like big pieces and I’ve got here a lot of my work was this is all acrylic wool I’ve got here Aran well like really have spawned are so I want to make a couple of pieces you know what’s real really really nice wool so yeah I saw would see a distinction between making work that’s small domestic that people could buy I’m not fitting their homes and then bigger pieces that I would want to me you know really push the scale and you need to be commissioned sometimes I think doing the PhD also made me realize I really enjoy working on projects that maybe last the 18 months or two years rather than like sometimes you do pop pop things yeah people said would you want to put a piece of work in a group shelf and I actually feel dumb not and yeah I would much rather develop a body of work around a vein and then do like a solo show and that takes as I say two or three like say I remember kima home talking about week on writing tutor and they’d worked with that artist for three years yeah I supported that artists and about the war and that’s the kind of relationship that I’m realizing yeah yeah and it takes time to build the relationships it takes time to make the work and the work is a research process but just becoming it so in a very fast-moving world it’s not valued that much it’s trying to slow and I think as I get older I a lot more I realize I jumped about and I’ve tried to do different things but actually I’m looking back now on the things that have sustained me it’s nice the things that I’m really probably are to say the projects that I worked on like the PhD yeah I’m the show what the Walker got my bench might be a teen month because we did that work we put in the proposals me an artist sat on the CEO role I came up with this idea and then we approached them because it was for the biennial you know they have not agreed two years they are looking for proposals so we came up with the proposal so the idea was that the work would be there we worked over 18 months and I edited catalog to go with yet so that was a lot and we were fundraising and so that was like a really good project but then I got a video laughter as I got chicken I got chicken promise

and then realized that I would do these big projects and then just be so long oh all forget having chicken boy had chicken looks twice now it wasn’t yeah so I know the signs you know you can get shingles it’s any assistance during the PhD I was terrified that I would go the nice thing about the phd’s you can get up and work when you want to work or you can work that at night yeah you’re your own boss we’re saying zan I was doing that show well I have my job yes I’m trying to juggle using my annual leave to go and do and as I say bedded in the catalogue which I was really proud of and it really pushed me and I learned a lot from it it’s always kind of projects I’m really interested in otherwise I could just sit in here and Potter about and do things and that’s nice as well but I think I do like those big projects until now it’s trying to set what’s the next goal really but I would love to be doing postdoctoral research good find a project that I could work but like you say it’s so narrow I’m doing or put together a proposal and get funding here I don’t think anybody’s ever got a PhD because you’re either lucky enough to just get in their position that means you don’t really have to think about it or you end up having to drift because that chance never really came well I noticed the difference of some of the people I’ve seen the PhD with the proposal was written by one of the members of staff so they were animal obviously the student took it and yeah they didn’t do their own project but the member stopped sort of invested in it and they used their tutor worse it was my proposal I wrote it and they said oh we’re we’re interest I applied for one that they’d advertised they said oh we were also interested in justice back from cellphones and it was this battle that one that they accepted so then they just have to find somebody to supervise me I never felt that they really born to what it was I was in Germany and then I think then you wasn’t getting any teaching whereas they know a few people who got a better he’s marking helping with marking dissertations just that wee bit of experience yeah and if you put that on your CV loved a lot of talks about my work I like talking you know I really enjoy doing tutorials yeah and I’d love to do teaching on the foundations of course if I could gala but I just know that it’s loads of people going for a limited no more jobs that you pick weird ideas and the students heads things you don’t have p.m. to the pant I seriously worried I’m seriously would you probably leave here and you’ll be stocking shelves and Tesco’s when you leave here so just enjoy enjoy do what you can don’t think there’s gonna be a job but the end of it there’s not really enough for that but then the universities need the money coming in so they can’t be on us for those things I feel like I have total impostor syndrome hello yeah I totally don’t feel ever found I always felt like I got in you know I was getting one old-world every time I went in there and I would come up with these wacky ideas and nobody else was coming up why is nobody else suggesting these things I mean I am actually very creative very unique for what I do and I don’t value what I do why are they gonna value it because when I applied in the first year for that British console China program and I have three weeks in China oh when I got it it was really funny because I was sat in the department and oh [ __ ] into check me for your application no unfortunately you know you’re not successful he was like yeah we are pleased to spend three weeks in China and I was totally scared I realized now I had three weeks there and then it took me two or three weeks to get much back into and then I to do my vibe I thought it was a bit naughty of me to have done it my supervisor said at one point I hope we’re not gonna have to have the talk about gathering about I had had all those years of just saying mushy do working in an office and then suddenly I was like do whatever I want I’d like to have the free time to be able to apply for things cuz I’m finding it now you know there’s opportunities last year I wasn’t applying for a lot of stuff because I thought but I don’t know if I’ve got a job I won’t be able to do and now I’m justifiable yeah because last year I thought I would find I would have found some kind of part-time job but does it say yeah I think okay just now just apply for I want to do it yeah and apply for loads and loads of stuff and don’t worry and I was clearly stopping myself from doing things yeah she just did anyway cuz partly I made a kind of promises up when I did the PhD you got to start being saying it’s up to this because I don’t have the pension I said okay you do use PhD but afterwards you’ve only got a proper job because you’ve got to be saving money for your pension I’ve still not I know I haven’t got a lot of money put aside and you know you do have to be practical yeah but then at the same time you can that worrying about money stopped you from doing things it’s a really tricky one and you have to of your life that’s why you never know what’s gonna happen and when so we have to take every day I have the same fears well this is it everybody though I’m talking to people and I go oh yeah this is quite reasonable and then when I talk to her mom she’s in her eighties and she’s so really worried well at the same time I think I know one of my previous managers sort of said okay because there was a full-time job coming up I said I could do that and it’s great money she said yeah but six months time like in the middle of January and you haven’t get up really early in the morning you’re just and she’s right I do tend to let myself get sidetracked into proper jobs but I just want to try and keep this going as well as a possible but like you say it’s important to look after physical health and mental health there can be quite a lot of jealousy yeah I think artists are all nice and we’re all in this together but so no do you know people do gang up on each other there is bullying people resent yeah somebody made a joke I got this Daniel and they said oh I hate the fact that you can afford to have us do you know what were they coming from but I’m doing that without a lot of yeah I’ve got holes in my jeans and my socks I haven’t had a holiday yes I know my sister Suleman going away and I just said I just feel like I can’t go because I would be worrying about the money but you need to have holidays there’s a lot of stuff I could have but I’m not so I’m sacrificing a lot to do this it’s almost like they’re questioning your commitment or something when you strip it away it’s they’re commenting on themselves but they’re just you know but it’s hurtful at the time so sharing the flap last year and I had problems with someone who was very narcissistic I got a lot of abuse and that really undermined me a lot and I’d ask this person to lean and it was a real real real shock I learned a lot about okay I need to be not relying on other people’s opinion of me and be my own assigning board because there are people who will chip away at you you saying earlier on about the studio what was really important that rogue it was a big old mill and I never work so the December January February they write up because I had these big windows she’s lovely but there was like ISIL is I just I had water running down the inside at one time that’s why I’m paying a be next yeah because I have heating and I have the Internet and I’ve been much more productive having this dedicated space yeah it’s not having a studio would be a real big thing it’s very important and so that’s why it’s important to have studio groups here and yeah host because the wars talk of maybe having one big building in the center there was talk about the Arts Council funding some more I don’t know how feasible hours or how far I’ve gone but yeah a lot of them have moved I qss have moved oh yeah here and I’ve got the vault have you been to the vault haven’t been to vote didn’t December they had a tabletop yeah sale I brought some pieces of art and I also had some ornaments and odds and ends and collectibles and stuff was just trying to clear it though something very many entities as a car boot sale I sold my last food so I applied for a couple of residence season I’m going to apply for a few more doesn’t think like last year wasn’t really ready I don’t know an IV I can go I’ve got projects I’m working off so being able to go somewhere I’m working those in network with people working really good but so for a few months there I was like I had the flu in January I’m not really I was fine I was like I have no energy I couldn’t even like watch TV or read a book this is a low point it doesn’t get much lower than this but I survived I could tell yes the flu making you feel depressed and I’m menopausal so I have all that that’s been great journey it’s really important for me to find role models and interestingly that vai event that went and you see the woman who was leading it commented and the fact that it was all yeah do you know we feel we need that direction yeah careers cuz the path just isn’t the area and I do think there’s still easy the male model is a lot easier I know talking to people individuals it’s still

huge thanks again to Jackie for being so generous with their time and ideas you’ve been listening to audio-visual cultures with me Paula Blair and Jacqueline Wiley if you find the show and in particular episodes like this involving travel and interviews please support production with a small regular membership fee on patreon.com forward slash a V cultures that will also give you exclusive extras or you can donate to PayPal or with slash Pei Blair be part of the conversation with AV cultures on Facebook and Twitter please be it share and subscribe on your chosen platform to help others find the podcast thanks awfully for listening catch you next time