On ochre, wild clay and foraging! This week I am joined by the magnetic pairing that is Heidi Gustafson and Belinda Blignaut. When I first came across the sculptures of the artist Belinda Blignaut I was blown away by them. Made from unprocessed clay and other found materials from her immediate surroundings, tapping into ideas around transformation. Though it took me a long time to actually reach out to Belinda and tell her what a fan I was, images of her works have been pasted on my studio wall and saved on Instagram for several years.

When we spoke on the phone a few weeks ago Belinda suggested we invite Heidi Gustafson to join us in conversation today.. And I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Heidi’s work in more detail since then.. Heidi is ‘a recovering philosopher who forages and crushes rock for a living.’ Her Book of Earth is an immersive introduction into the world of ochre, a naturally occurring mineral used to make pigment. Heidi’s cabin in the rural North Cascades shelters the Ochre Sanctuary project, which contains more than 600 pigments from around the planet.. a transforming body and future earthwork made with ochres and earth pigments gathered by humans worldwide.

We spoke about the body, and Belinda’s journey through health and healing. The body is central to Belinda’s work - the Mud Rights practice sees her covering her body with earth, creating an earth skin and lying down in the ground.. It is a still, meditative and contemplative experience of re-connection.

Heidi spoke about the vastly broad array of colours and forms that an ochre can take, how they have been a way of understanding her connection to earth, and how ochres are connected to our bodies through our material make-up.

Find Belinda & Heidi on Instagram: @belinda_blignaut  @heidilynnheidilynn

Find out more about Heidi’s Ochre Sanctuary: https://earlyfutures.com/ochrearchive/

Heidi’s book, Book of Earth: https://earlyfutures.com/book-of-earth/

Belinda also organises the Wild Clay retreat: @wildclayretreat

We are on Instagram at @Mater________

We also have a website with 19 commissioned pieces of writing which can all be read for free on our website mater.digital

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I am joined by the wonderful Nicola Turner & Mick Sheridan, speaking about sculptures, upholstery, waste, horsehair and wool..

Nicola Turner: https://www.instagram.com/nicolaturner.art/?hl=en

Mick Sheridan: https://www.instagram.com/m.s.upholstery/?hl=en

Nicola is an artist with a background in set and costume design. She has designed for The Royal Opera House, National Theatre and Sydney Opera House to name a few.. Today we will be talking about her sculptures. As an artist Turner investigates dissolution of boundaries, liminal states, and continuous exchanges across ecosystems.. exploring the interconnection of life and death, human and non- human, attraction and repulsion. She combines found objects that hold traces of memory, with the shapes of living forms, and materials from organic ‘dead’ matter such as horsehair - a material used previously for bedding and furniture. Her sprawling sculpture, The Meddling Fiend, in the Royal Academy courtyard has been a highlight for many visitors to this year’s Summer Exhibition.

Mick is a second generation upholsterer based in Wales, proficient in both traditional and modern methods, and specialising in British wool fabrics. Mick’s Guerilla Reupholstery project finds fly tipped or discarded furniture on the streets, and transforms them into something new.. Using as much of the existing materials as possible and augmenting that with waste products from their reupholstery business. The chairs are sculptural, several being made in collaboration with an artist, and one with a Designer/Weaver.

Mick's Guerilla Upholsterer account: https://www.instagram.com/guerrilla_upholsterer/?hl=en

The Meddling Fiend at The Royal Academy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7gVTwxvhPk

Julie Ann Sheridan: https://www.instagram.com/sheridanjulieann/

Sadie Campbell: https://www.instagram.com/sadiedidi/

Find us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/?hl=en

Our website: https://mater.digital/

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A fascinating conversation with Deborah Tchoudjinoff and Oscar Salguero about geology, minerals, technology and fiction

Deborah is a multidisciplinary artist based in London who works across sculpture and digital media. She has worked with AR, VR, Unreal Engine, combined with sculpture made from wood or metal to present mixed media installations. Often beginning with a locality or research concept, she considers what the form is through the process of material and visual experimentations. Her practice engages with the temporal and spatial aspects of ecologies, in particular how technology, constructs, remembers, and forgets the stories of past and future ecologies. She is influenced by fiction, world-building, and otherworldly aesthetics.

Oscar is an independent curator, researcher, and archivist. His exhibition NEO MINERALIA presented a selection of new geological specimens crafted by ten international artists. The exhibition suggests recent rock formations no longer fit within the traditional groups: Igneous, Metamorphic, and Sedimentary. Instead, the era of human influence on the climate and environment has introduced two post-natural rocks: Synthetic and Digital. Salguero is also the founder of Interspecies Library - the first archive dedicated to the study and advancement of artists’ books exploring alternative interspecies futures.

Deborah is on Instagram at: deboraht_ff

Oscar is on Instagram at softcoreny

Find us on Instagram at Mater________

Our website it mater.digital

Projects & people referenced:

The Toaster Project, Thomas Thwaites, 2011

Neo Mineralia, Oscar Salguero

Sae Honda, Everybody Needs a Rock

Works by Deborah Tchoudjinoff 

Ceramic Material Atlas

Lehman Brothers

Earth Emotions by Glenn Albrecht

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This week I’m joined by Miriam Sentler and Paulina Blaesild, to speak about deep time matters, art, archeology and the act of swimming

Miriam lives and works between Norway and the Netherlands. She is a contemporary artist and doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo.. Her projects often result in long research trajectories, taking shape in different mediums like installations, audio, textile, video, photography, artist publications, and text. Sentler's interdisciplinary work emphasises the changing of landscapes, focussing on the cultural and environmental legacy of (fossil fuel) industries and the modern era.

Paulina is a doctoral research fellow at the department of Historical Studies, Gothenburg University, Sweden. She is a palaeoecologist and wetland archaeologist working with vegetation development studies and artistic practice to explore past and present ecological encounters, their interconnections and the mediatory effects of technology.

This discussion highlighted to me the potential within having not just conversations but also working collaborations across disciplines.. Or even non-disciplinary spaces as Paulina mentioned - where you are not restricted by certain processes.. These in-between spaces create so much room for curiosity and productive exploration. 

Miriam referenced the book Arts of Living on a damaged planet: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517902377/arts-of-living-on-a-damaged-planet/

Find Miriam online at:

www.miriamsentler.com 

www.deeptimeagency.com 

Find Paulina online at:

Blaesild, P. (2024). Paulina Blaesild - Human-Environmental Interactions in Wetlands, Arkeologisk Forskningsseminar, Universitetet i Bergen (presentation, in Swedish).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVK4_Tp6D3Q

Karlsson, M. (2021). Unik stenåldersmiljö grävs fram i Östergötland, Forskning och Framsteg (Interview, in Swedish). https://fof.se/artikel/2021/7/unik-stenaldersmiljo-gravs-fram-i-ostergotland/

Larsdotter, A. (2021). Torvbrytning hotar fornmiljö. Populär Historia (Interview, in Swedish).

https://popularhistoria.se/nyheter/torvbrytning-hotar-fornmiljo

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Jussi Parikka ( https://jussiparikka.net/ ) is a writer and media theorist. He is Professor of Digital Aesthetics and Culture at Aarhus University and Visiting Professor at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague as well as the Winchester School of Art. He is the author of Insect Media, A Geology of Media, What is Media Archaeology?, and Operational Images. 

Abelardo Gil-Fournier ( https://abelardogfournier.org/ ) is an artist and researcher. Originally trained in Physics, he holds a PhD in Arts from the Winchester School of Art (UK). His practice addresses the entwining of image surfaces with the living crust of the planet. His work encompasses different techniques, spanning from sound and video installations to computational processes such as machine learning, including assemblages where the living conflates with the animate.

Together they have collaborated extensively, and their new book Living Surfaces: Images, Plants, and Environments of Media (can be found here) will be launching on 25th June. In this conversation they break down some of their thinking around the materiality of media being inherently connected to the sites they come from.. they talk about plants and living surfaces, of 'dynamic formations'. And how this book related to their practices as individuals.

Link to the full text read at the beginning by Jussi Parikka, on Mater.digital: https://mater.digital/jussi-parikka/

On Abelardo Gil-Fournier’s recent solo show at the Fundacion Cerezales- https://www.artforum.com/events/juan-jose-santos-mateo-abelardo-gil-fournier-fundacion-cerezales-2024-549901/

Operational Images book- https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/operational-images

Seed, Image, Ground video essay- https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/situations-post/seed-image-ground/

They talk about Elemental Media through an example of: how the emergence of photography introduced the question among botonists: What if plants are somehow living photographs on their own?

Other people referenced throughout the conversations

Esther Leslie, Synthetic Worlds 

Nicole Starosielski - https://filmmedia.berkeley.edu/people/nicole-starosielski/

Giuliana Bruno - https://afvs.fas.harvard.edu/people/giuliana-bruno

Anna Tsing - Patchy Anthropocene - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Efmf77F2oNM

Harun Farocki - https://www.harunfarocki.de/home.html

Anna Munster and Adriene Mackenzie On Their Invisualities

J R Carpenter - https://luckysoap.com/criticalwriting.html

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Today on The Mater Podcast, we are speaking with Chris Keeve and Zayaan Khan.

Chris is a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of Kentucky, their research has to do with seedkeeping, plant breeding, and agrobiodiversity conservation—the things that people do, or don’t do, with seeds.. and the things that seeds may or may not do on their own—in the face of legacies of racial capitalism in land and food systems. Their dissertation project involves participatory and collaborative work as a seed grower and organiser with multiple seed networks and seed and land justice projects in the U.S. Their work sheds light on the cooperative geographies of seed networks

Zayaan Khan works in food justice, land justice, and seed justice as a storyteller and transdisciplinary artist based in South Africa. Drawing inspiration from the rich biodiversity of local landscapes and the enduring relationship between people, the land, and the sea. 

She is also building the Seed Biblioteek, a seed library based in Cape Town, South Africa. Seh is a PhD Candidate in The Environmental Humanities South, University of Cape Town, South Africa, an interdisciplinary research cluster, focused on seed: "From seed-as-object to seed-as-relation."

We speak about

• Seedwork
• Land reform
• Spiritual connection with the land
• The land having a memory
• South Africa
• Kentucky
• Rematriation

Find Zayaan Khan and Chris Keeve

Follow us on Instagram or visit our website

Other projects: Truelove Seeds, The Heirloom Collard Project

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One for the painters out there! This week on the Mater podcast I’m joined by two painters, Safira Taylor and Kirsty Buchanan. 

Safira is an artist currently based in Amsterdam, her current focus is a long-term painting series titled ‘Mother Stands for Comfort’, exploring the intricacies of reproductive processes. Executed on vintage linen, these sheets bear a rich history predominantly passed down by women across generations. 

Kirtsty Buchanan, also based in Amsterdam, makes paintings from compositions drawn from domestic scenarios or sketches from dream diaries. She is mostly interested in the realm of the domestic and how this space can influence use of material.

We touch upon the vast subjects that are paint, canvas, linen, process, paint mediums, colour, pigments… so much more to go into within each of these aspects of painting - hopefully for future episode.

Find them on Instagram at safira.taylor and kirstygraces

Roy Oxlade book Art and Instinct 

Amy Sillman Faux Pas

Kate Bush Mother Stands for Comfort

Glossary of Dying Terms:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_dyeing_terms

Follow us on Instagram or visit our website

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For the first ever episode of The Mater Podcast, Tom Chivers and Dr Claire Harris come together to speak about The Thames Foreshore. Hosted by Maddie Rose Hills.  

Tom Chivers is a writer, publisher and arts producer from South London. He has released two full collections of poetry, and his debut novel London Clay: Journeys in the Deep City, was published in 2021. The book journeys through personal, historical, mythic & geological tales of London beneath our feet. Tom writes that the book ‘is partial, subjective and incomplete; I am neither historian nor geographer, but write with a poet's compulsion for rumor and conjecture’.

Tom is currently researching a phd entitled In the Flow of Things: Encounters with the Mudlarks of the Thames Foreshore.

We also spoke with Dr Claire Harris, who is a palaeolithic and community archeologist. Currently in a position at the Museum of London Archeology as a member of the Thames Discovery Programme. Claire has previously worked as a curator and researcher at the British Museum, and is a research associate with the Pathways to Ancient Britain project. Previous collaborative projects have included ‘Neanderthals in Hackney: Exploring North London’s stone age past’.

We spoke about what is going on down on the Thames Foreshore in London. The materials down there - sand, mud, silt, clay, human detritus.. We spoke about mudlarking, and the history that is visible when you are on the foreshore. We spoke about deep time, and palaeolithic London.. Community Archeology and finding a sense of belonging through sites such as these in the busy city

Find Tom Chivers' Soundcloud with Thames sounds here

Follow Tom on Instagram

Find more work by Claire here

Claire on LinkedIn

A few notes about mudlarking and the foreshore: 

Anyone searching the foreshore in any way for any reason requires permission from the Port of London Authority

https://pla.co.uk/thames-foreshore-permits

There are plenty of safety precautions to consider when on the foreshore, so make sure to do research this before visiting.

Follow Mater here: mater________

and mater.digital

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Welcome to The Mater Podcast, hosted by me, Maddie Rose Hills.

I initiated Mater in 2021, as a research project driven by a fascination for how artists think about materials. In September 2021 I finished my Masters in Art and Material Histories, which left me feeling inspired by all of these artists and their amazing relationships with materials.. Through Mater, I began to broaden the research, looking at seed-keepers, philosophers, architects, curators, designers, geographers, ecologists, highlighting the tangled nature of the world of materials.

Through this podcast we will be joined by new and old collaborators, and we'll be speaking about clay, seeds, glitter, paint, forests, pigments, milk, mould, water...

I’m excited to go on this journey of curiosity and discovery, diving into the world of materials.. You can follow us on Instagram at Mater_______ And you can read all of the commissioned texts for free on our website at mater.digital.

Thank you for listening, Bye!

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This week I am in conversation with Hannah Fletcher and Steffie de Gaetano about sustainable photographic processes, soil chromatography, and waste

Hannah Fletcher is an artist based in London, working with photographic processes, incorporating organic matter such as soils, algae, mushrooms and plants into photographic mediums and surfaces. I first heard of Hannah through her work as the founder of the Sustainable Darkroom, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to researching and disseminating lower-toxicity photographic materials and methods.

I’m thrilled that Hannah has introduced me to our second guest Steffe De Gateano, an interdisciplinary artist and researcher currently based in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands.. Steffie’s work is situated at the intersection of architecture, landscape, art, and anthropology, disciplines she critically unbuilds by uncovering their colonial entanglements and ramifications of Modernity. Steffie’s Permeance Project uses the technique of chromatography on soils from the river Dommel, which have been contaminated by industrial waste streams. 

Steffie de Gaetano

Website https://steffiedegaetano.net/about.html

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/steffiedegaetano/

Hannah Fletcher

https://www.instagram.com/hfletch/

https://www.hannahfletcher.com/

Sustainable Darkroom: https://sustainabledarkroom.com/

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The fabulous Rebecca Coleman & Nicole Seymour join me to chat about the sparkly, clingy, joyful, irritating, enchanting paradox that is glitter!

A few years ago I attended a zoom lecture by Dr Rebecca Coleman about her long-term research project into glitter. A project which was initiated following a collaging workshop with young girls, organised by Coleman.. It was witnessing the allure of glitter as a material in this workshop, as well as how glitter was appearing for weeks afterwards, lingering at the bottom of a bag, or attached to belongings and clothing, that led her to follow some of these themes further..

Rebecca is a professor at the school of School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies and Bristol Digital Futures Institute at the University of Bristol, with research crossing media, cultural studies and feminist theory

Rebecca recommended that we invite Nicole Seymour to join us in this conversation.. Nicole works in the environmental humanities, asking how literature and other cultural forms – from documentary film to stand-up comedy – mediate our relationship to environmental crisis. Her latest book, Glitter, is an environmental-cultural history of that substance from Bloomsbury’s “Object Lessons” series. She is professor of English and graduate advisor of environmental studies at California State University at Fullerton.

I am officially a mega fan of Beckie and Nicole, they are both iconic. They do such a good job of maintaining the enjoyment of glitter while taking it seriously as a subject.. I highly recommend both of their books which I will link to here:

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781912685387/glitterworlds/

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/glitter-9781501373763/

More Links

Rebecca Coleman

https://journals.oslomet.no/index.php/rerm/article/view/3669

https://read.dukeupress.edu/cultural-politics/article/18/1/79/298683/Glitter-Shine-GlowPatinas-of-Feminine-Achievement (I'm not sure if this is open access?)

https://www.academia.edu/36834385/_Osgood_J_in_press_You_cant_separate_it_from_anything_glitters_doings_as_materialised_figurations_of_childhood_and_art_in_Sakr_and_Osgood_Eds_Post_Developmental_Approaches_to_Childhood_Art_Bloomsbury

https://www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-press/publications/glitterworlds/

Nicole Seymour

A very short piece on glitter’s usage in fishing lures. https://bloomsburyliterarystudiesblog.com/2022/09/fishing-lure-glitter-environment.html

https://www.dukeupress.edu/aesthetics-of-excess

https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/214/ShineThe-Visual-Economy-of-Light-in-African

Also referenced: Kylie Crane, Plastic and Concrete

Mater:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/

Website: https://mater.digital/

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A magical conversation with Emma Witter and Krista Mileva-Frank about Shells and Grottos.. I first came across Emma’s work a couple of years ago.. Emma is an artist who makes work from found and waste ephemera. Looking back at heritage craft, she combines ancient materials with relatively recent scientific processes such as electroforming and kiln forming. When I asked Emma a few months ago to be on the podcast, she wanted to take her time to pick the right guest. Which brings us to our second guest, Krista Mileva-Frank.. 

Krista Mileva-Frank is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art program at MIT. Her dissertation examines grottoes and rock landscapes in nineteenth-century France and Latin America in the context of environmental transformation, labor, and racial politics. Krista is the curator of the group exhibition Objects for a Heavenly Cave, on view at Marta Gallery in Los Angeles, 7-12th October.. The show features work by Emma Witter..

Links

Emma: https://www.instagram.com/emma_witter_/?hl=en & http://www.emmawitter.co.uk/

Krista: https://architecture.mit.edu/people/krista-mileva-frank

The Exhibition: https://marta.la/exhibitions/various-artists-objects-for-a-heavenly-cave

here is a link to the exhibition.

The exhibition catalog, along with the GROTTO hat, can be purchased from the Marta Bookshop.

Other artworks in the exhibition referenced:

James Naish (Corycia bench)

Lily Clark (superhydrophobic fountain Dew Point III)

Emily Endo (scent-based piece Nymphaeum)

Masaomi Yasunaga masaomi_yasunaga (Melting Vessel 熔ける器, 2024)

Marta Gallery on Instagram

Fumi: https://galleryfumi.com/ & Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gallery_fumi/?hl=en

Mater on Instagram

The Mater website

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I am joined by the artist duo Matterlurgy to talk about Water! Matterlurgy are a research-based artist duo composed of Helena Hunter and Mark Peter Wright. Some of their projects have responded to sites such as a hydropower station, disused steelworks, a laboratory for ice simulation, an abandoned copper mine, as well as galleries and museum collections. Examining ways of sensing, translating and representing environmental change.

Our conversation focused on some of their projects that surround water.. From viewing ocean water under the microscope and the invisible activity which we are unable to see through the naked eye, through to complex river ecosystems. We discussed how they use installation, sculpture and film to bring this research into gallery/museum spaces, and the mediums that enable them to share these ideas.. 

Links

Matterlurgy website: https://www.matterlurgy.net/projects

Matterlurgy Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matterlurgy_studio/

Mark Peter Wright artist website: https://markpeterwright.net/

Helena Hunter artist website: https://www.helenahunter.net/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_helena_hunter/?hl=en

MIMA (Middlesbrough Museum of Modern Art): https://mima.art/

The Seili project was hosted by Contemporary Art in the Archipelago: https://contemporaryartarchipelago.org/

Sensitives Steam, website link: https://sensitives.stream/

Arts Catylist: https://artscatalyst.org/ 

Flom Sang: https://www.matterlurgy.net/flom-sang

Museum of Sheffield artist's page: https://www.sheffieldmuseums.org.uk/whats-on/meet-the-artists-matterlurgy/

Bakewell Old House Museum: https://www.oldhousemuseum.org.uk/

Wellcome Collection: https://wellcomecollection.org/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwsc24BhDPARIsAFXqAB00eCUGltjjED65pjkD0CpUH1MnHFEyh9s57mUx30ZR0o6jikMFT9QaAj9wEALw_wcB

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This week I discuss oil paint, car wraps, spray paint, light, and painting tools with Harriet Gillett and Kate Dunn.  

This conversation contains references to sexual assault.

Harriet is an artist living and working in London, who works from sketches made in the moment, usually in pubs at live gigs.. Working predominantly with oil and spray paint, she layers thin veils of colour over a warm fluorescent spray paint ground. She recently finished an MA in Fine Art at City & Guilds of London art school, after previously studying English Literature. 

When I contacted Harriet to be a guest on the podcast, she suggested we are joined by Kate Dunn. Kate, another former C&G student who is now a fine art tutor at the university. The two met in tutorials and conversed over their shared use of spray paint..

Kate Dunn studied MA Fine Art at City & Guilds of London Art School, following a classic training in Florence. Previous artworks have included UV reactive pigments, UV light, sound, pigments, spray paint and coloured pencils. Her works have been installations and experiences based around painting; working with themes such as renaissance, rave, light and sacred space. skin is a new body of work looking at themes of touch, rage, and absence. These works involve using oil paint and abrasive tools on car wrap. Car wraps are made as a temporary and alternative exterior. Created to last only a few years, the wrap is like a kind of transitionary skin. 

Harriet Gillett on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/harrietgillettart/

Website: https://harrietgillett.co.uk/work

Kate Dunn on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bellissi.mama/

Website: https://www.k8dunn.org/

Mater on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/

Website: https://mater.digital/

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I am joined by two UK-based artists Hannah Lees and May Hands. The two have recently undertaken their second collaborative project together, titled ‘Self can shade off into otherness gradually’. The project was held at VOLT gallery, run by Devonshire Collective in Eastbourne.

Hannah Lees investigates ideas of cycles, constancy and mortality; the sense that things come to an end and the potential for new beginnings. This constancy, be it in religion, science, history or in organic matter, is visible in her practice through her attempts to make sense of and recognise traces of life. Traditional processes, materials and rituals are often reworked to explore how ideas and beliefs can live, die and be reborn across times and cultures.

May Hands explores how our relationship with materiality shapes our understanding of the world. She documents and collects observations of the world around her through traditional craft-based techniques and the collecting and reinterpreting of objects. Reflecting upon seasonal cycles, sensuality and the inherently curated aspect of our everyday consumptions, her work questions how society constructs and articulates value and desire.

Links

Volt Gallery: https://www.devonshirecollective.co.uk/about/exhibitions-at-volt

Devonshire Collective: https://www.devonshirecollective.co.uk/

https://www.instagram.com/devonshirecollective/

Hannah and May:

https://www.instagram.com/hannahjlees/

https://www.instagram.com/may_hands/

Collective Ending: https://www.collectivending.com/

https://www.instagram.com/collectivending/

Green screen refrigerator action Mark Leckey: https://markleckey.com/IMGs-2010

Primitive Technology - send to May. can she share a video of the person making cordage. Funny that they are often men

man on YouTube - video of him making a furnace and also cordage

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An amazing conversation with Bisila Noha & Simone Brewster 

Bisila is an artist working predominantly with clay, with a background in Translation and International Relations. She writes about ceramics, crafts, identity and design, and has a particular interest in the contributions of women of colour to the history of art and craft. Her words are a bridge bringing the past - the forgotten, the ignored, and the belittled - to the present.

Bisila suggested we are joined in conversation by artist, designer & cultural change-maker Simone Brewster. Strongly grounded in craft, Simone’s practice includes painting, sculpture, jewellery and writing, Using her creative outputs as her voice, celebrating and sharing windows into varied Black female narratives and histories. The threads that flow throughout her work display a balance of function with beauty, a repurposing of the “ethnic” and the “western” and a continuous playing with scale, materiality and architectural form. 

Links

Bisila Noha Instagram

Simone Brewster Instagram

Bisila’s blog post about translation

Bisila Noha Baney clay project

Negress and Mammy

Woman In Parts

Simone’s solo exhibition

Spirit of Place

V&A porcelain sugar holder

Ursula K le Guin, Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

Elizabeth Fisher's best-known work is Women's Creation: Sexual Evolution and the Shaping of Society. The 7th chapter The Carrier Bag Theory of Evolution inspired Le Guin

Lydia Yuknavich talking about The Carrier Back Theory of Fiction

Frank Gehry, a Canadian architect, famously said, “Decoration is a sin, expression is in materials”

Truth to materials - ‘A belief that the form of a work of art should be inseparably related to the material in which it is made’.

Slow Motion Multi Tasking, Tim Harford

Follow Mater on Instagram

The Mater website

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Hannah Pezzack is a writer, editor, and curator. Drawing on sonic knowledge, ecology, and the politics of intimacy, she regards language and sound as deeply intertwined sensory and embodied mediums. She is currently a junior curator at Sonic Acts – an art, theory, and technology biennial – and is the assistant editor of Ecoes, a bi-annual magazine about ‘art in the age of pollution’, published by Sonic Acts Press. A lot of her work has been about relational ontologies – thinking about human and non-human exchanges and how we might be able to challenge the hierarchies and binaries between them. 

Hannah has suggested Anastasia (A) Alevtin as our second guest for this conversation.. 

(A) is - a theorist, writer, and artist whose work scrutinises how dominant Western politics of structural marginalisation is lived and quietly subverted in one’s daily anti-ableist, migratised, and non-binary communities and multispecies kinships. In their artistic practice, they work with text, textile, performance, aesthetic gestures, and collective readings. With the support of the Finnish Institute in the UK & Ireland, Art Promotion Centre Finland and Glasgow Seed Library, they are developing Dormancy, Reseeding, and Resistance. The project engages with communal gardening, seed-saving practices and grandmothering in the contexts of anti-ableism and food in/security, specifically lived by chronically sick and other precarious bodies in Turku, Vantaa, and Glasgow.

Links

Hannah Pezzack on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hanapezzack/

Anastasia (A) Alevtin: On Instgram: https://www.instagram.com/awaitingbody/

Anastasia’s website: https://soundcloud.com/mutantradio/scrying-the-landscape-w-dim-garden-071124?ref=clipboard&p=i&c=0&si=81A0A022125347DE91651223A8CE1B71&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Aquatic Encounters book: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Aquatic-Encounters-A-Glossary-of-Hydrofeminisms-by-Anastasia-A-Khodyreva-editor-Elina-Suoyrj-editor/9789527258262

Noise Summer School: https://graduategenderstudies.nl/education/noise-summer-school/

Sonic Acts: https://www.sonicacts.com/

Astrida Neimanis - Hydrofeminism or on becoming a body of water. 

Astrida Neimanis - Post-humanist phenomenology

Hannah Interviewing Astrida Neimannis for Sonic Acts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6B5RESGwFY

Hannah Rowan: https://www.instagram.com/rowanhannah/?hl=en

Anne Imhof - One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s27gmjB8gdw

Find Mater on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/?hl=en

Find the commissioned essays on The Mater Website: https://mater.digital/about/

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An EPIC conversation with Ellie Barrett. We delve into the philosophical and artistic histories of materials. We talk about Ellie’s art practice working with various materials and in collaboration with both her mum and daughter.. Ellie is a sculptor, practice-based researcher, writer, academic and artist-mother, who is invested in exploring sculpture as a collaborative discipline. Using material engagement as a means of activating different circumstances and experiences as sites for making. She is an advocate for artist-m*thers. 

The PhD: https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/152305/1/2020BarrettPhD.pdf

E.Barrett’s website: https://elliebarrett.com/

Put It To Work: https://putittowork.wordpress.com/

E.Barrett’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elliecbarrett/?hl=en-gb

Links to sited texts and works (in order of mention)

Aristotle’s Hylomorphism: https://metaphysicsjournal.com/articles/10.5334/met.2

New Materialism: https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780190221911/obo-9780190221911-0016.xml

Material Literacy, A.S.Lehmann: https://www.academia.edu/35213411/A_Lehmann_Material_Literacy_Bauhaus_Zeitschrift_Nr_9_2017_20_27

Glitter with R.Coleman and N.Seymour, The Mater Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-mater-podcast/id1749226924?i=1000670752060

O. Bax: https://www.oliviabax.co.uk/

R.Molloy: https://www.artthou.co.uk/editorial/12/rebecca-molloy

J. Shannon The Disappearance of Objects: https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780300137064/Disappearance-Objects-New-York-Art-0300137060/plp

The Goat, R.Rauschenberg: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/rauschenberg-goat

Dominique White: https://blackdominique.com/

E.Barrett Salt Dough Exhibition: https://elliebarrett.com/explain-things-to-me/

J.Bennett Vibrant Matter: https://www.dukeupress.edu/vibrant-matter

C.Oldenburg, London Knees: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/77314

Object Oriented Feminism: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctt1g2knjg

Object Oriented Onology: https://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/the_big_idea/a-guide-to-object-oriented-ontology-art-53690

Lion Salt Works: https://lionsaltworks.westcheshiremuseums.co.uk/about-us/

Art & Agency by A.Gell: https://monoskop.org/images/archive/4/4d/20150328075023%21Gell_Alfred_Art_and_Agency_An_Anthropological_Theory.pdf

SPACE podcast: https://spacestudios.org.uk/events/out-of-space-episode-4-looking-after-the-art/

Bad Vibes Club - Ten Texts on Sculpture, Maintenance: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/ten-texts-on-sculpture-10-maintenance/id1220925467?i=1000659524759

E.Thomas: https://www.herts.ac.uk/uhbow/students/meet-the-artist-elly-thomas

E.Thomas, Play and the Artist’s Creative Process: https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/products/play-and-the-artists-creative-process-book-elly-thomas-9781032178370

E.Barrett’s, Processes and Forms for Artist-Motherhood, In Situ residency text: https://www.in-situ.org.uk/post/in-residence-ellie-barrett-and-nora-2-yrs

K.Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv12101zq

E.Barrett, The Sculpture Kit: https://elliebarrett.com/the-sculpture-kit/

R.Morris: https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/robert-morris-62842/

B.Le Va: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/barry-le-va-dead-post-minimalist-sculptor-1234582161/

H.Judah, How not to exclude artist mothers and other parents: https://www.hettiejudah.co.uk/how-not-to-exclude-artist-mothers-and-other-parents

E.Barrett’s w/ mum and daughter: https://putittowork.wordpress.com/2023/08/26/how-to-work-as-a-mum/

Hand-made Soft Play: https://elliebarrett.com/handmade-soft-play/

E.Barrett, Vibrancy and Natural Dyeing: https://putittowork.wordpress.com/2023/09/20/agency-and-natural-dyeing/

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Bosco Sodi: https://www.instagram.com/studioboscosodi/?hl=en

https://www.boscosodi.com/

Alberto Rios de la Rosa: https://www.instagram.com/ariosdel/?hl=en

Casa Wabi: https://casawabi.org/en/

Mater Website: https://mater.digital/

Mater Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/?hl=en

Bosco Sodi is an artist known for his richly textured, vividly coloured large-scale paintings. Born in Mexico City. Bosco Sodi has discovered an emotive power within the essential crudeness of the materials that he uses to execute his paintings. Focusing on the spiritual connection between the artist and his work, Sodi seeks to transcend conceptual barriers. In 2014 he founded the non-profit art centre Fundacion Casa Wabi in Mexico’s Puerto Escondido. 

Alberto Ríos de la Rosa is a Mexican art historian. He currently serves as a curator at the PAC ART Residency in Houston and as curator of the International Biennial of Arts

and Cultures of Antioquia for the World 2025, Colombia. His academic background includes a Master's in Art History from The Courtauld Institute of Art, London (2014), and a Bachelor's in Art History and French Literature from Macalester College, Minneapolis (2011).

From 2014 to 2023, he worked as a curator at the Casa Wabi Foundation, where he curated solo exhibitions for artists like Daniel Buren, Michel François, Harold Ancart,

Jannis Kounellis, Ugo Rondinone, Izumi Kato, Huma Bhabha, and Claudia Comte. He also directed the residency program in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca and Tokyo, facilitating participation of over three hundred art professionals from around the world in community projects. Additionally, he promoted emerging Mexican artists through the

foundation's exhibition platform in Mexico City.

Previously, he was part of the curatorial teams at Museo Tamayo in Mexico (2011- 2013), the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in the United States (2011), and the Peggy

Guggenheim Collection in Venice (2010). Through his work, he continues to make significant contributions to the field of art history and curation, fostering cultural exchange and promoting both established and emerging artists on an international scale.

Fundación Casa Wabi is a non-profit, civil association that fosters an exchange between contemporary art and local communities in three locations: Puerto Escondido, Mexico City, and Tokyo. Casa Wabi statement: "Our name originates from the Japanese philosophy of Wabi-Sabi, which seeks beauty and harmony in the simple, the imperfect and the unconventional. Our mision is focused on forging social development through the arts, which we carry out through five key programs: residencies, exhibitions, clay, films, and mobile library. Casa Wabi is located on the Pacific coast, 30 minutes from the Puerto Escondido airport, Oaxaca. Set between the mountains and the sea, our headquarters have been designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando and under the initiative of Mexican artist Bosco Sodi. Our facilities include a multipurpose palapa, six separate bedrooms, two closed studios and six open studios, a screening room, / auditorium, a 450 m² exhibition gallery and various workspaces that make it an ideal place to recharge and interact with other artists."

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Emii Alrai & Amanda Pinatih discuss material artefacts, memory, belonging and museum practice.

Emii Alrai: https://www.instagram.com/emiialrai/?hl=en-gb

https://emiialrai.com/

Amanda Pinatih: https://www.instagram.com/amandapinatih/?hl=en-gb

https://madepinatih.com/

Design Museum Dharavi: http://designmuseumdharavi.org/Design_Museum_Dharavi/Dharavi.html

Guna Guna, When things are beings exhibition at Stedelijk https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/production-static-stedelijk/images/_whats%20on/tentoonstellingen/2022/When%20things%20are%20beings/WhenThingsAreBeings2022-EN-FINAL24112022-SMALL.pdf

A Lake as Great as its Bones: https://emiialrai.com/A-Lake-as-Great-as-its-Bones

Royal Armoury Museum https://royalarmouries.org/leeds

Horsehair with Nicola Turner & Mick Sheridan on The Mater Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-mater-podcast/id1749226924?i=1000665067091

Emii Alrai is an artist and trained museum registrar whose work spans material investigation in relation to memory, and critique of the western museological structure and the complexity of ruins. Working primarily in sculpture and installation, her work operates as large-scale realms built in relation to bodies of research which concern archaeology and the natural environments objects are excavated from. Her material explorations weave in oral histories, inherited nostalgia and the details of language to question the rigidity of Empire, the power of hierarchy and the static presence of history. Clay vessels, gypsum forms and steel armatures punctuate the labyrinth-like spaces Alrai creates, mimicking museum dioramas and romanticised visions of the past.

Amanda Pinatih is an art historian, curator and PhD candidate. As Design Curator at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, she brings new perspectives to the museum’s vast design collection. Her experimental working method is driven by an interest in developing new formats for knowledge transfer, while her exhibitions and projects explore the intersections of social, political, (de)colonial, environmental and economic issues. Simultaneously as a PhD candidate at the VU Amsterdam, Pinatih is researching the affordances of Indonesian objects around social and political contestations of belonging for diasporic communities with roots in the Indonesian archipelago, both in the museum, at home and in artistic practice. 

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Claire Baily is a London-based artist, researcher, and educator whose work navigates the intersections of art, sustainability, and material innovation. I had been following Claire’s research on Instagram, after knowing her as an artist working with an array of materials, with amazing technical casting ability.. And then seeing her document a shift away from Petrochemicals, resins etc, looking at what a sustainable making practice might look like in the context of the climate emergency, documenting her experimentations with new materials for casting. I enjoyed the way she was sharing the research, the tests and the trials online - developing more sustainable art production systems with regenerative resources at their core, she is focusing on developing bio-based materials and processes that can be viable alternatives to existing making methodologies dominated by petrochemicals.

Claire suggested Sarah King as our second guest for the conversation.. Sarah is a circular economy researcher, sustainability and innovation consultant with experience in project management, design led research, and systems change. For the last eight years she has worked closely with businesses and academic institutions to educate and identify innovation opportunities in response to current environmental challenges, supporting the development of new technologies, products, and services. Her areas of scope include the built environment and construction, plastics and packaging, textiles and apparel, and sociocultural behaviour change. Recent projects include the culturing of pure Bacterial Cellulose for use in the apparel industry, food waste composite materials for interior panelling, and natural pigments for utilisation with digital processing techniques.

Links

Claire: https://www.clairebaily.com/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaZNJHTKnISc_3qDtrvlDlsbt0S0pMjc86KwWqx9wbRp9MWsV78-i3k6dao_aem_FlxJwHA1EmzgFcSs0Whekg

Claire on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clairebaily/

Sarah: https://www.earthliprojects.com/

Sarah on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarah_earthli_projects/

Materials Club: https://steamhouse.org.uk/news/materials-club-biomaterials-101/

On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/materials_club/?hl=en

Steamhouse Birmingham: https://steamhouse.org.uk/

More on the HS2 project in collaboration with British Ceramics Bienial: https://www.britishceramicsbiennial.com/news/from-waste-to-resource/

Centre for Ecology and Art Goldsmiths: https://www.gold.ac.uk/research/centres-units/research-centre/centre-for-art-and-ecology/about-us/

Olivia Aspinall: https://www.instagram.com/do_not_go_gentle_/

Material Futures at CSM https://www.arts.ac.uk/subjects/textiles-and-materials/postgraduate/ma-material-futures-csm

Follow Mater on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/

Original writing commissions by Mater: https://mater.digital/

Get in touch with any thoughts, questions, or even suggestions for future episodes: info@maddierosehills.co.uk

Please make sure to follow, subscribe and rate if you are enjoying the podcast, it means the world!

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A conversation about Plastic with designer Shahar Livne and environmental humanities scholar Heather Davis.

Shahar Livne is an award winning conceptual material designer. Livne's lifelong fascinations in nature, biology, science, and philosophy developed into an intuitive material experimentation way of work during her degree studies at the Design Academy Eindhoven. Shahar brings life to unique stories through objects and installations centered around materials as carriers of narratives. Some of Livne's projects deal with obscure materials such as blood, man-made fossils, crystallization and more, today we are going to be focussing on plastic, and Shahar has put me in touch with Heather Davis who I am thrilled to have here as our second guest today

Heather Davis is Assistant Professor and Director of Culture and Media at The New School in New York City. As an interdisciplinary scholar working in environmental humanities, media studies, and visual culture, she is interested in how the saturation of fossil fuels has shaped contemporary culture. Davis is the author of over 80 articles, book chapters, reviews, and catalogue essays. Her most recent book, Plastic Matter (Duke University Press, 2022) traces plastic’s relations to geology, media, biology, and race to show how matter itself has come to be understood as pliable, disposable, and consumable.

LINKS

Shahar Livne: https://www.instagram.com/_shaharlivnedesignstudio_/

https://www.shaharlivnedesign.com/

Shahar Livne, Metamorphism: https://www.shaharlivnedesign.com/metamorphism

Heather Davis: https://heathermdavis.com/

Heather Davis, Plastic Matter: https://www.dukeupress.edu/plastic-matter

• Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, French philosopher and historian - Heather spoke about her writing on the endless possibilities of matter and material. Plastic as a material is deeply connected to wanting to manipulate matter at the most fundamental levels
• Zakiyyah Iman Jackson:  https://scholars.duke.edu/person/zakiyyah.jackson#:~:text=Her%20research%20investigates%20the%20fundamental,and%20rhetoric%20of%20Western%20science Thinking about the emergence of the category of the human, and the way it emerges through the hierarchy of humanity. The forced plasticity of the human body in various forms of black suppression. Various humans as abject other that carries the weight of plasticity.
• Pollution Is Colonialism - book by Max Liboiron
• Heterotopia: https://foucault.info/documents/heterotopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en/
• Geo Design, https://www.designacademy.nl/page/5809/geo%E2%80%94design
• Pinar Yoldas, Ecosystem of Excess.
• Crimes of the Future
• The podcast Heather referenced at the end about adaptive capabilities: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/garbage-patch-kids/id1554578197?i=1000641946004

Follow us: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/?hl=en

Get in touch: info@maddierosehills.co.uk

The Mater website: https://mater.digital/

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This week I’m joined by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin of Formafantasma. Formafantasma are a design studio who investigate the ecological, historical, political and social forces shaping the discipline of design today. Their extensive client list includes Prada, Hermes, Vitra Design Museum, Fendi, The Venice Bienale, Rijksmuseum, and the National Museum of Norway.

This conversation was recorded at The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, in the middle of feb 2025 just before the opening of Studio Formafantasma’s exhibition Oltre Terra. Oltre Terra is is an ongoing investigation of the history, ecology, and global dynamics of the extraction and production of wool. The show will run until July 13th so make sure to check it out..

Oltre Terra at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam - https://www.stedelijk.nl/nl/tentoonstellingen/formafantasma

Formafantasma website - https://formafantasma.com/studio

Formafantasma on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/formafantasma/

Cambio - https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/formafantasma-cambio/

Geo-Design at Design Academy Eindhoven: https://www.designacademy.nl/page/5809/geo%E2%80%94design

Interview with Tim White - Exlana sheep breeder https://vimeo.com/780306084

Artek x Formafantasma collaboration: https://www.artek.fi/en/company/designers/formafantasma

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Today I am chatting with Lucila Kenny and Barbara Collé about COLOUR

Lucila Kenny is an Argentinean textile designer as well as a researcher focused on Natural Dyeing and the colourants produced by a range of plant species. As a natural dyer and educator she has worked with universities, art academies, fashion designers, biologists and artists exploring, preparing and producing plant colorants for dyeing, inks and paints.

Barbara Colle is a Dutch visual artist and philosopher, investigating our experience of colour. She publishes her findings through essays, artist books and visual essays. On the subject of colour she guest lectures at universities, contributes to publications and curates. 

The two have bonded over colour and perception through many conversations and collaborations, so it was very moving to be able to be a fly on the wall for one of their chats. We discuss how colour is changing all the time, and letting go of a desire to control colour when natural dying and while growing pigments. Lucila describes is as seeing that the plants are 'gifting' us, instead of what we want to take. They discuss the language we use to describe colour, and how it says so much about our relationship with it.

Links

Lucilla's website: https://www.lucilakenny.com/ | On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lucila.kenny/?hl=en-gb

Barbara's website: https://www.barbaracolle.nl/ | On Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/barbara___colle_/

Indigo website: www.growingblue.info

flower, fruit, leaf, husk and root (book): https://www.lucilakenny.com/shop/book

Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer

Elmer, by David Mckee (the children's book about colourful elephants)

The Color Kittens, Margaret Wise Brown (Barbara's children's book)

Eleanor Irwin, Colour Terms In Greek Poetry (1974)

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Hello! This is Maddie Rose Hills, host of The Mater Podcast.

This week's episode is a little different, and a lot shorter!

I have just got back from a week-long Research Residency at West Dean School of Arts, Craft, Design and Conservation. What is a research residency? Well it can really be anything - but for me it meant wandering around the school, meeting people from lots of different departments, and talking with them about what attracted them to the craft and materials that they were studying or teaching. I wrote a diary while down there and have put together a selection of the thoughts here.

This text can be read on the Mater website: https://mater.digital/stories/a-research-residency-at-west-dean/

Or listened to here on the podcast platform

I will also share more images on the Mater Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/?hl=en

Find out more about West Dean: https://www.westdean.ac.uk/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/westdeancollege/?hl=en

West Dean Fine Art on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/westdeanfineart/?hl=en

More about West Dean: 'Our schools of arts, design and conservation offer a uniquely broad range of world-leading courses. At the heart of all we do, is our belief that 'making' makes our lives better. We celebrate the intrinsic value of work that has been hand-made by artists and artisans, and challenge the assumption that mass-produced must be the only way because, across the world, the maker movement is growing.'

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A conversation between artist Claye Bowler and art historian Andrew Cummings about the exhibition Dig Me A Grave, burials, connection to the land , latex, soil, death & more.

Links

Dig Me A Grave dates & venues:

Steam Works Gallery, WIP Studios, Wandsworth, London

https://www.wipspace.co.uk/dig-me-a-grave

21.03.25 - 11.05.25

PV 20.03.25

Auction House, Redruth, Cornwall

21.06.25 - 19.07.25

PV 20.06.25

Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield

04.10.25 - 02.11.25

A sculpture from this body of work was also part of a group exhibition

Winter Sculpture Park 2025

01.03.25 - 12.04.25

Claye’s exhibition Top (2022) is being shown again at Queer Britain 10/09/2025 - 23/11/2025

Compilation of protests and actions against the Supreme Court: https://whatthetrans.com/compilation-of-protests-against-the-supreme-court/

Fundraising towards five transfem causes in the UK https://www.fiveforfive.co.uk/

Claye on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/clayebowler/?hl=en

Claye’s website: https://www.clayebowler.com/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAafm3sQ4CBOg5SYofyAmlntP0rmy1-pJZufTxZbWUseEfV5LruEAwpCwAY3MVw_aem__qa4reKB4fVG85oxlrdUjw

Andrew: https://researchers.arts.ac.uk/2344-andrew-cummings  

https://courtauld.ac.uk/research/research-resources/publications/immeditations-postgraduate-journal/immediations-online/immediations-no-18-2021/the-promise-of-parasites/ 

Fire Choir https://thenestcollective.co.uk/projects/fire-choir

The False Bride, Folk Song that Claye mentions with ‘I’ll lie in my grave until I get over you’

About the Museum Registrar Traineeship: https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/fine-art/news/article/2675/museum-registrar-traineeship-opportunity-in-leeds-from-september-2024#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20traineeship%20sees%20the%20successful,collections%20work%20amongst%20other%20students. 

Brandon Labelle: https://brandonlabelle.net/

Gluck: https://www.npg.org.uk/schools-hub/gluck-by-gluck

Living Well Dying Well - Andrew’s End-of-Life Doula foundation training - https://lwdwtraining.uk/ 

Grief Tending in Community https://grieftending.org/ 

Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief, North Atlantic Books, 2015 

Camille Barton, Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding our Sorrow, North Atlantic Books, 2024

Top, at Henry Moore Institute https://henry-moore.org/whats-on/claye-bowler-top/

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This week on The Mater Podcast, Evie Hatch, studio and materials specialist and host of Jackson's Pigment Stories, is joined by artist Ginny Elston to discuss The Personalities of Pigments. 

Ginny, winner of the Student Award in Jackson’s Art Prize 2023, shares her insights on her collaboration with Unison Colour to curate a series of soft pastels (pictured here). Evie and Ginny also dive into pigments, paint, and their own understandings of colour.

Ginny Elston (Instagram)

Website

Evie Hatch (Instagram)

Jacksons Art (Instagram)

Jacksons Art blog

Jacksons Art Supplies online shop

Jacksons Art Prize

Ginny's Versatility Soft Pastel Set for Unison

Ginny teaches private classes in Edinburgh, held at Scot-Art, (@thescotart) on London Road. It's a local hub for artists in the city with community spaces, studios and galleries.

Ginny’s interview with Jacksons

Links mentioned throughout the conversation

Amy Sillman, On Colour

Rebecca Fortnum, On Not Knowing: How Artists Think

The Mater Podcast episode on the colour blue

Katharina Grosse - colour liberated from the confines of support. Instagram | Website

Ginny’s recommendations for Art Schools

the New York Studio School (@ny_studioschool)

Leith School of Art (@leithschoolofart)

There are some great artists teaching at Black Pond Studio (@blackpondstudio)

Ginny also teaches private classes in Edinburgh, held at Scot-Art, (@thescotart) on London Road. It's a local hub for artists in the city with community spaces, studios and galleries.

Reach out - Mater________ on Instagram

Website - mater.digital

Email - info@maddierosehills.co.uk

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Welcome back!! Today I'm speaking with Tessa Silva about MILK. Tessa is a British-Brazilian artist whose work considers our collective use of materials from ancient history to the present day. Using craft as a tool to investigate the relationship between culture and nature, Tessa unravels the storied histories of the materials she works with in the knowledge that every material has its own biography. Using milk as her primary medium, Tessa has spent the last six years working with surplus milk proteins as a material to produce bespoke, handcrafted sculptural objects. Titled Feminised Protein, a term first coined by American writer, feminist, and animal rights advocate Carol J Adams to address the exploitation of non-human reproductive cycles to produce food on a mass scale, Tessa’s project exists in dialogue with themes of sustainability, history, nature and motherhood.

The Feminised Protein project has been exhibited at institutions such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, and at the 10th edition of Future Heritage, curated by Corinne Julius. Tessa has delivered lectures on her practice at the V&A, Henry Moore Studios, and for the British Council’s Circular Cultures programme.

Tessa Silva

Tessa on Instagram

Tessa's Mater text

Esther Leslie's Mater text

Ma-tter Seetal Solanki

Alfriston Clergy

Weald and Downland museum

Hook and Son Farm - raw organic dairy farm

Arts Council England, Developing Your Creative Practice grant

Tessa referenced two other episodes of The Mater Podcast: 'Emma Witter & Krista Mileva Frank' and 'Andrew Cummings & Claye Bowler'

Mater on Instagram

The Mater website

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BCB: https://www.britishceramicsbiennial.com/ 

This year’s programme: https://www.britishceramicsbiennial.com/news/full-programme-announced-for-british-ceramics-biennial-2025/

Clare Wood: https://www.britishceramicsbiennial.com/person/clare-wood/

Burleigh Pottery: https://www.burleigh.co.uk/pages/about-us

ReForm Herritage: https://re-form.org/

Recast programme BCB: https://www.britishceramicsbiennial.com/project/recast/

The podcast that Clare mentions about the Recast programme: https://open.spotify.com/episode/750cQoCFPCXBv8YjQGJWLN

Claire Baily episode of The Mater Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-mater-podcast/id1749226924?i=1000694666344

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This fascinating conversation was recorded at the Rembrandthuis museum in Amsterdam, where I had the pleasure of speaking with The Rembrandt House curator, and the former head of paintings conservation at the Rijksmuseum. We were discussing the paintings of the 17th century Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn: about Rembrandt’s pigments, the evolution of his painting process, and the art of painting conservation. My two guests couldn't be more perfect for this podcast because they have both been at the forefront of both unveiling and sharing the latest discoveries into Rembrandt’s materials..

Petria Noble is the former Head of Paintings Conservation at the Rijksmuseum, a position she held between 2014 and 2022. She is a researcher specialised in paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn, and an expert in the material aspects of his paintings. Prior to joining the Rijksmuseum, Petria worked for 18 years as a Paintings Conservator at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague.  

Leonore van Sloten has held a position as curator at The Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam since 2005, here she’s responsible for various exhibitions and publications on Rembrandt and related themes.. She initiated and curated amongst others the 2019 exhibition Rembrandt Laboratory: Rembrandt’s Technique Unravelled, the exhibition that we discuss in this conversation, which shone a spotlight on the world of scientific research into materials and techniques. 

I'm Maddie Rose Hills, and you have been listening to The Mater Podcast

Find images from our conversation on the Mater Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/?hl=en-gb

Related links

Rembrandt House Museum: https://www.rembrandthuis.nl/en/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=692326751&gbraid=0AAAAADSRQune0nZ9wB8TfU1tnowVtWEeI&gclid=Cj0KCQiA0KrJBhCOARIsAGIy9wBP9jrDMiXcvx-b-bCP7UN7yffJpwk_csoiU9bx7erGmLeE_ftk9gkaAhFcEALw_wcB

Petria Noble: https://dutchmethodunfolded.humanities.uva.nl/?page_id=474

Leonore van Sloten: https://www.leonorevansloten.com/

Mauritshuis: https://www.mauritshuis.nl/en?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=1613811005&gbraid=0AAAAADuJqF0q5DhmqQoriFVNj5wZ7Kuwt&gclid=Cj0KCQiA0KrJBhCOARIsAGIy9wC2-pIUMtAUUgxiUzjJYrDJNwt6u8xX_5m1lWHykc1HmpHLyBsKHNwaAgC9EALw_wcB

Art Matters Journal: https://www.amjournal.org/

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My two guests are completely passionate about the subject of Minerals... artist Mále Uribe and writer/geoloist Marcia Bjornerud

Mále Uribe is a Chilean architect and artist whose work explores material culture, the value of natural resources, myths, chemical properties, industrial processes and microworlds. As designer in residence at London’s Design Museum in 2019, her installation Salt Imaginaries focused on the extractive processes around minerals located in the Atacama desert in Chile. and her 2025 Somerset House installation for the Chilean Pavilion at London Design Biennale was a investigation of minerals from the Andes titled’ Minerasophia: Underground Cycles. In her work materials are understood as vibrant and autonomous entities that carry a transformative power. 

Male suggested Marcia Bjornerud for this podcast.. Marcia is a structural geologist whose research focuses on the physics of earthquakes and mountain building. Bjournerud has written several books including Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks, and Timefulness: How thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World. She is a Fellow of the Geological Society and a contributing writer to The New Yorker, Wired, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times..

Marcia Bjornerud

https://www.lawrence.edu/people/marcia-bjornerud-walter-schober-professor-of-environmental-studies-and-professor-of-geosciences

Emergence essay, Wrinkled Time: https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/wrinkled-time/

Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks. Book by Marcia Bjornerud

Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World. Book by Marcia Bjornerud

Mále Uribe

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/estudio.male/?hl=en

Salt Imaginaries, London Design Museum: https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/designersinresidence2019cosmic/salt-imaginaries-by-mle-uribe-fors

Minerasophia, Chile Pavilion and Design Biennale, Somerset House: https://londondesignbiennale.com/pavilions/2025/chile

'La Medula' Poem by Ursula le Guin (referenced by Male): https://www.instagram.com/p/BuqP-zPl8xb/

Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Book by Jane Bennett

Mater

https://mater.digital/

Find more images from our conversation on the Mater instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/?hl=en

Get in touch: info@maddierosehills.co.uk

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APPLY to Joya AiR + Mater residency (plus info and terms & conditions): https://joya-air.org/joya-mater-apply

Joya: AiR is a landmark international, interdisciplinary arts residency grounded in the intersection of creative practice, ecological inquiry, and sustainable cultural engagement. Situated within an off‑grid, climate‑positive environment in rural Andalucía, the residency fosters an intellectually rigorous and generative context where artists, writers, and researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds can deepen their practice, expand critical perspectives, and engage collaboratively with ecological and cultural challenges. 

Joya AiR website: https://joya-air.org/

Joya AiR on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joya_air/

Mater is an evolving research & publishing project founded by Maddie Rose Hills, exploring our relationship with materials through commissioned writing, interviews, exhibitions, and podcasting. Mater brings together artists, geologists, architects, curators, ecologists, gardeners and writers, investigating what draws us to particular materials, the stories materials hold, and how they shape our lives.

Mater website: https://mater.digital/

Mater on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/

Email me with any questions: info@maddierosehills.co.uk

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