Q. It is the first time the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship has been awarded to two people — how significant was that for you both?
It’s an honour to be awarded the Frances Hodgkins fellowship, and to be the first collaborators invited. The depth of research and creation paved by previous fellows is very inspiring.
We are grateful to Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka for the support, and for expanding the scope of the programme to accommodate a collaborative practice like ours. We’ve been shown much generosity from the university community and it’s been wonderful to connect to the university’s libraries and special collections.
Q. How did you both meet?
We met while Miranda was attending an artist residency in Canada in 2018. We started working together in 2019 while we were attending an artist residency together.
We both had our own practices before we started working together, and these practices shared a lot of sympathies. We started working together as an experiment, without any expectations or pressure for it to go well. It turns out that it did go well and we’ve been working together ever since.
Q. What is the key do you think to a collaboration like yours — given you are partners in life and art?
We don’t see a distinction between life and art, and maybe that is the key to a collaboration like ours.
Q. Tell us about your work together and how it has developed since you began collaborating?
Q. What was your plan for the year of the fellowship?
We’ve had a busy few years with many exhibition outcomes, which has been so rewarding, but it hasn’t always left a lot of space for research and innovation in our practice. We knew coming into the fellowship year that we wanted to push in new directions. Embracing the opportunities that working on campus provides was also important to us.
Q. What has having this year in your hometown (or adopted town for Amanda) meant?
Being in Ōtepoti for the fellowship has meant we have been able to connect more often with many of the incredible artists that live here, share more cups of tea, and more communal meals in our studio. Not having to spend long settling in meant we could get straight into our research, too.
Q. What has been the best thing about this year?
The best thing about this year has been all the visitors to our lovely studio and the stimulating conversations we’ve had. The worst thing is it has to come to an end!
Q. You were overseas for a time — can you tell us about the projects that you were involved in?
We were recently overseas, mainly in the traditional territory of Mi’kma’ki known as the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. We presented our exhibition, "Collective", at MSVU Art Gallery in Kjipuktuk (Halifax) and completed a new video installation in collaboration with our dear friend, poet, musician, and artist Colleen Coco Collins. The resulting exhibition, "Radicant", [was] at YYZ Artists’ Outlet, in Tkaronto (Toronto) until the end of November. Radicant is the first work we’ve made that includes written and spoken words, thanks to a suite of 13 beautiful poems that Colleen composed and recited for the piece.
Q. What other exhibitions have you done this year?
In May we were included in the group exhibition, the chronicle of "a new love order" at The Engine Room at Massey University in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington as part of the ADA (Aotearoa Digital Arts Network) Symposium. For this show we reimagined our 4-channel video work, A Wardian Case into a virtual space.
Q. How do you find time spent overseas informs your work?
The communities that we’re part of in Canada support and sustain us in significant ways. Being present, and participating in these communities is important to us. It is a great privilege to have a job that allows us to travel to new places, meet new people, understand different perspectives and share some of who we are and how we think. Whether we’re in Ōtepoti or overseas, it’s spending time around other artists that informs our work and keeps us going.
Q. What similarities and differences do you both bring to the collaboration?
We don’t have distinct roles when we work together. We each have a very broad and at times random set of skills that we bring with us, but we are almost always doing something that neither of us have done before. We are always learning together. We are more similar than different in the ways that we problem solve and think through ideas.
Q. Your work is very varied, why is that?
We have both always allowed our work to be led by our research and observations. The materials, processes, and outcomes we settle on has to do with what the work is about or what it is in response to. Our projects have included everything from butter sculptures to augmented reality experiences.
What projects are you currently working on?
Our research and experimentation this year has focused on how plants are contained and classified. With the help of some generous experts, we’re exploring the material potential of borosilicate glass in order to realise a sculptural installation.
Having the space and time to apply ourselves to learn and upskill on CAD software has been instrumental for growing our practice. Our studio is a smorgasbord of materials and experiments right now! We’re also working on two publications, a hardcover version of our "Collective" exhibition, and our fellowship catalogue, which will have some very special contributions.
Q. How did nature come to feature a lot in your works?
Listening to plants, the methodology that has underpinned our collaborative practice thus far, has been a useful framework because through this lens you can connect to so many varied stories and ways of seeing. The way people relate to environments is deeply intersectional with other issues, world views and histories, so there is always a lot to study. This way of working came about through close looking and identification of the plants we’d never met and were surprised to find growing in the cracks and berms of Brooklyn, New York. It has evolved from there.
Q. Now nearly at the end of that year, have you achieved what you wanted to?
Now we’re two-thirds of the way through our fellowship year, our cups are already full with many new skills, connections and ideas that we know will serve us long after the fellowship ends.
Q. Do we get to see an exhibition of your work at the Hocken sometime soon?
Our fellowship exhibition will open at the Hocken Gallery in February 2025.
TO SEE
Groundbreakers: Grace Joel, Frances Hodgkins and the new art of Ōtepoti, until April 27, 2025
