Termites, trial and error. - Interview with Maddie Rose Hills.
Maddie Rose Hills, is a British artist living and working in London. Her practice is a deep exploration of time and materiality that culminates in paintings and more recently sculptural forms. Studi0 was lucky enough to to show two of her works during Becoming Habits Chapter 1 and have recently had the chance to speak to her about her practice in more depth.
2020 and 2021 have been two very strange and in many ways difficult years but it seems to me, a lot of artists have benefitted from the additional time they had and from a change in circumstances, which led them to create works differently. What was your experience ?
The past year has been challenging, but I often find creative merit in restrictions, and artists are incredible at adapting. I am privileged to have been studying full time since September, giving me the opportunity to focus wholeheartedly on art without distractions. Our university studios were closed from December until this month, but this forced me into working more on my laptop. I spent days learning how to use sound editing programmes, as this became a clear creative option from a small desk and a laptop. This was a breakthrough for my work and a medium that I will continue to explore.
For your MA at City and Guilds you had to choose a material to investigate. Can you tell us what that material is and why you felt drawn to it?
I started with Newspaper as I was making the monochrome works that were included in Becoming Habits out of this. I was really interested in the fast transition of newspaper, from an important information-packed object, to an immediate waste object. I moved from newspaper onto cardboard which has a similar value shift. I’ve since been pulping cardboard to make 3 dimensional forms, which have a naturally earthy quality. This led me to a project I’m working on now making a large termite mound from the pulp.
The termite mound and the cardboard box are symbols of production - the fast human and the slow evolution of the mound. Termites represent these solid species. They require little from the earth, they work in a team of up to millions, and are incredibly adaptable. Their history on earth far outlives our own, and this is why they have this deeply ingrained method of producing. They have created these architectural mounds that function as a lung, they breathe and regulate heat, they harvest a fungus inside. Equally the cardboard box is an incredibly interesting symbol of our own species’ production. Our trial and error approach is much more obvious and in reality we are only just tapping into how much inspiration can be taken from other species. Our time on this earth is fast, like a lightning bolt through geological time, and the cardboard box represents that. It symbolises the speed at which we function. Compared to the mound that takes a million bodies to build, maintain and inhabit, the cardboard box idealises individualism. It is also capitalism and consumerism, it's the idea that an object is mass produced and the cardboard box is the moment an individual has decided they want one of those objects for themselves. This one object plucked from thousands just like it, becomes a representation or a part of the person who has ordered it from the internet. What humans have done with tree fibres to make the cardboard box is also genius, its a highly sculptural object. The materials have been transformed by industry from a rough organic form into this incredibly smooth, flat box, entirely separate from where it came from, as with so many other materials that we interact with.
The process & the length to create your work is quite considerable, is there anything specific that drew you to this lengthy process?
I don't like the idea of something coming in and out of my studio quickly, there is a temptation to produce too much ‘stuff’, and slowing down can help limit the amount that I’m putting into the world. I love the slowness of making which comes from working with lots of layers, slowly adding and removing to build form. I get to know the materials really well, it's a deeper understanding of knowing exactly how they they are going to move, what the limits are, how you can push paint to get a desired effect, its a relationship and its one that very hard to vocalise, like trying to explain through words the actions that of your hands in tying shoelaces. This is quite a special connection to materials that is only really possible when you have spent a lot of time working with something.
I really enjoy your materials blog on your website, it merges your interest in the physicality of the materials with the written word. How do you feel the two correlate in your practice and does one help the other and vice versa?
I can only understand something properly when I start writing about it. I often get a block when I am speaking about something, but the moment I start writing it down it floods out. I think there is a certain speed at which I type that allows me to think through ideas at a slightly slower pace than thinking out loud. Through writing I began exploring materials creatively. I was keeping all of this writing to myself, and most of the time it stays to myself, I write most days in this online diary, and most of this is very much note form, but every now and then it just really leads onto an idea that i find interesting so I use the blog as a way to come back to these texts and build on them. It's not that they inspire a work physically but they all become part of the way in which I think about ideas behind my work. Writing was also a gateway into making soundwork, as a way to express ideas I never knew how to express through only painting.
Interestingly enough few of your works are monochromatic white but I always feel as though they are colourful. Could you tell us a bit about your relationship with colours?
That’s really interesting, I guess the shadows probably play a big part in that, in bringing out subtle shades from the white: soft pinks, blues and purples.. Some of the ridges that I’ve scratched into the paper cut quite deep through many layers of paper, exposing the darker shadows underneath. So in a way the colours represent how deep that mark is. But yes they are painted with one all over shade of white. I was very aware that I didn't want any ‘colours’ in those paintings because it overcomplicated what it was about for me. I wanted it to be all about the forms. Colour has such a huge impact on what a work is saying, and it can totally change everything about it. So I think colour should always be a careful consideration - when I was purely painting I was much more relaxed and expressive with colour, but since adding depth I have found myself questioning its purpose more. Having moved into more sculptural forms, starting with the white newspaper paintings which referenced sculptural ideas, I am having to re-evaluate how colour fits into the equation.
I am quite fascinated with this moment when an artist makes the decision to dedicate their lives to art. Do you remember a time or moment where you took that decision ?
Amazingly I was always encouraged by both of my parents to work in the arts. Through school it was very clearly my favourite subject alongside music which I really loved, I was only really interested in the creative aspects of school, which I carried through to university. Ironically I love the broadness of research into all the subjects I overlooked at school (languages, history, geography, biology) so who knows, but that was more an issue with the curriculum and how subjects are taught at school. It really doesn't work for everyone, and for me the teaching methods sadly didn’t have any resonance. But in terms of the realisation that being an artist could be possible, I remember selling a painting in my last week of university and feeling like this is an option, and as soon as I knew I could make some kind of money from doing what I loved I knew I wanted to see if I could make it work.
Would you share with us an aspiration or dream that you have, no matter whether art related or not.
I’m moving to Amsterdam in October and a big short-term dream is to get onto one of their residency programmes. They look after artists really well and there are some exciting opportunities. Other than that I have this project in England which involves walking from my family home along a river out to sea, with different people who live in the area at different stages of the journey. It's about 100 miles so it would involve a lot of organisation.
In your experience, what are the biggest challenges / blockers for young emerging artists in today’s world ? And what would you change about it if you could ?
I think funding is a huge part of it, it's so competitive and I know lots of people who even after attending university which is a challenge in itself, were deterred from following a career as an artist because the financial challenge was too high. Since looking at options for artists in Amsterdam there are lots of nurturing systems in place like fully funded residencies and generous grant bodies that will support an artist as their practice grows. I think it can be off putting applying for funding in the UK when you don't have a project idea, and options for artists to be funded to just create are valuable, this has become more of an option in the past year or so. I know that it can feel so relentless repeatedly applying for opportunities as an artist, everything is so competitive and you can lose a lot of money through applications. This is an issue that my friend Ocki at Blue Shop Cottage is flagging at the moment, trying to significantly reduce/erase application fees as standard for competitions, as it excludes such a huge proportion of the population. The fees can be so high and it amplifies an exclusive system which the art-world should be rallying against, not for.
Thank you to Maddie Rose Hills.
More information can be found on her website and/or Instagram