Studio visit - Andy Hutson March 2023

DS: Could you tell us about your studio and working environment? Does this influence the work you are making? 

AH: Generally chaotic. I tend to have several things on the go at once, which may outwardly appear as disorganisation, but there’s usually a logic to it. I’m currently working out of the garage in a space under our house, which I share with my partner Kim. The garage is my dirty workspace, where I do the cutting, sanding, grinding and welding etc; whilst under the house is somewhat cleaner. I mostly do drawing and painting in there. Both spaces have some limitations in terms of their size constraints, which generally determines the scale of the work I produce.

DS: You’ve moved from Melbourne/ Naarm, and have been living in Nipaluna/Hobart for a few years now, how do the urban and natural environments manifest in your work? Has this changed with the move to Tasmania?

AH: I pretty much position my practice in the intersection of these two things – culture/nature. When I lived in Naarm, I found myself drawn to urban spaces where natural forces had inundated or taken over the place – overgrown building sites, or even just weeds popping up in expected places, and I referred to these places both directly and indirectly in my work. In lutruwita/Tasmania, this has kind of flipped – the natural world is so omnipresent here, it always feels a bit like the human-made is kind of pushing outwards against the non-human; but of course there are still really significant environmental issues here. Despite wilderness tourism being a major revenue drawcard, the government seems hell-bent on logging as much of the state as they can lay their hands on.

DS: You’re originally a mainlander, but you’ve been in Hobart a while (long enough to be a local?) Could you give me your impressions of the local art scene?

AH: Ha! I believe it’s a 10 year validation process – so I still have to wait another two or three years before I can consider myself Tasmanian. On a very base level, it feels like Tasmanian artists are divided into two distinct camps: the landscape and/or bird painters, and everyone else. Despite this, there is a wonderful community of clever, creative and supportive people here, doing some really interesting and amazing things. After almost 8 years here I’m finally beginning to feel like a member of the community, which is really exciting.

DS: I’m interested in the practicalities of studio time, how do you (and your partner) divide your time between family / art-making / and external work?

AH: Kim and I both work full-time at the moment, which can make finding time for art tricky. I think our daughter Sylvie is becoming very accustomed to living with and around our practice deadlines. We’ve tried many times to establish a weekly family timetable, but between us it seems impossible to predict what we’re capable of on any given evening! I try to take days off whenever I can; I’m lucky that I have a pretty flexible working arrangement. Otherwise it’s in the evenings and on weekends. I’ve become quite strategic about what kind of work I do on weeknights, and focus on the noisy stuff (sawing, grinding etc) on the weekends.

DS: With a background in sculpture and jewellery, your practice tends towards the low-fi and handmade. What materials are you currently using and experimenting with? 

I’ve recently developed a bit of a love affair with encaustic. I was using wax for casting jewellery and came into possession of a big chunk of raw beeswax from a colleague with an apiary – when I realised it was too soft for casting, I decided to give the encaustic process a go (after sieving out all the dead bees!). It’s a beautiful way to work, a kind of sculptural form of painting. I’m also working with copper for the first time, and I’ve been playing around with sand-casting pewter.

DS: Could you us a little about your forthcoming exhibition, Autoflora?

AH: That title came after noticing that a bunch of cars in my neighbourhood were sprouting plants or growing lichen. But it also neatly refers to the surrealist technique of automatism – letting the unconscious mind take over during the creative process. In this case, I’m thinking (or not-thinking?) about the role of plants and nature in our lives, and letting these relationships inform the visual choices that occur in the development of the works. The patterns, processes and designs used in these relief sculptures are borrowed from encounters on the bike path to and from work, which runs behind a series of industrial areas, and past beautiful rivulets and roadside reserves. Although any actual ‘floral’ motifs are quite sparse, each artwork refers back to this intersectional space in some way.

DS: What do you want viewers to take away from your art? Are there aspects that you think get missed?

AH: It’s actually not something I think about much; most of the time I feel as if I’m making the objects for myself - resolving something internally, in order to move on to the next problem. But I guess I hope that people are drawn in by the textures of the works. I’m personally attracted to objects and surfaces that tell a story of their own, hence my love of found things. I try to give my works that same feeling, as if they’ve had a life before. I think an imagined history can act as an entry point to a deeper experience of an artwork; it’s like a secret back door.

DS: I like how you let humour and playfulness into your work, could you tell us about the role of humour in your work?

AH: The world can be a pretty fucked up place. Humour is a great fortification against cynicism and despair. I’ve also found it’s a very useful way to lure people into an (artistic) experience they otherwise might have avoided.

DS: How do you title your works?

AH: I tend to gather words and phrases in my notebooks; particularly words that have multiple meanings, or double entendres - I love wordplay, occasionally it creeps into the works themselves. If a title doesn’t leap out at me to begin with, I often trawl through my notebooks to find something that fits. But there’s usually some kind of pun in there. I can’t help myself.

DS: In some of your previous projects you’ve worked with a collection of items. Can you please tell us about some of your collections, and your most treasured possessions?

AH: My largest collection these days is probably all the objects and materials that I’ve gathered (Kim would say ‘hoarded’) to use in my artwork. I have boxes of stuff that often sit untouched for years and suddenly something presents itself as the perfect addition to whatever I happen to be working on. As far as treasured possessions go, Kim and I have an art collection that we’re always expanding, as much as our budget permits. Each work is wonderful and unique, but I often find myself returning to Matthew Stanton’s large photograph of a riverbank engulfed in dense foliage, from his ‘Deep North’ series – it’s so evocative and completely transportive.

DS: Could you tell us about some of the other art forms that you work in, that we are not exhibiting here? I know that you draw a lot as part of your planning, is it also a stand-alone medium? Could you tell us about your jewellery too?

AH: Drawing and sketching is arguably the most significant aspect of my practice. With somewhat limited studio time, I’m always jotting down ideas and designs for works I’d like to create at some point – but I’ve rarely exhibited these. I also tend to develop projects by working backwards from an idea; so the medium and process kind of follow from there - for example I recently made a bunch objects that were deliberately dysfunctional, so I made them out of food. I’m also working on a project telling stories about lutruwita/Tasmania’s cultural and natural history – which over time has evolved into a large-scale collaborative puppet project. The jewellery is mostly miniature versions of sculptures I’d make in other materials at a larger scale.

Could you tell us about your forthcoming major project, Apologue Isle?

This is the puppetry project I mentioned before. The original idea was simply to tell stories about the links between the environment and people in lutruwita/Tasmania. I wanted to use dioramas and puppets to do this - I've made lots of kinetic works before, and I love the uncanny valley feel of puppets and low-fi automata. As time progressed, and I learned more about this place and its history, I realised that I'd need to find other people to tell those stories, and to focus on prioritising First Nations voices. From there, it was only logical that I recruited others to help with set design, music, voice recordings, etc. Now there's a huge team of collaborators - around 23 at last count! The process will work a bit like a surrealist exquisite corpse - someone writes a script, then another person designs the set, somebody writes a musical score, and I'll make the puppet to act it out. After that we'll record the dialogues and animate them all using simple mechanics. It's an epic undertaking, but we've just received a huge Australia Council grant which will make the whole thing possible - I'm thrilled and a bit nervous.

DS: Who are the artists that have influenced you, or that you admire? 

AH: There are hundreds of artists whose work I love. But I’ve recently been thinking about:
-Oscar Tuazon – for the melding of personal narrative and sculpture; and the interplay of scale, function and community (both in the making and the experience of the work).
- Rosmarie Trockel – for the ability to perpetually reinvent her own visual language, but somehow always make it beguiling and beautiful.

DS: What are your personal hanging preferences, how do you like your work installed?

AH: If possible, I like to confound people’s expectations of how an exhibition might look. This is likely a symptom of working as an art handler and hanging everything at 1600mm centres with even spacing…

DS: You had a residency at CAT studios in Tasmania, what would be a dream location for you to have a studio or residency?

AH: I spoke about this a lot with my friend Jake when we were CAT. My ideal studio would have all the space and equipment I need, but somehow be surrounded by beautiful nature and with access to decent, if not excellent, coffee and snacks. Maybe in Spain or Mexico? Oh, and preferably near a beach too.

DS: A brief list, what are you currently:

Reading 
AH: The Roving Party, by Rohan Wilson, How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm and newly acquired favourite – Anglo Saxon Amulets & Curing Stones by Audrey Meaney

Watching 
AH: Obsessing over the dystopian The Last of Us, and recently loved Triangle of Sadness and Athena

Listening 
AH: Lisa O’Neil, Chris Knox, Bonny Doon, Moondog (and my regular go to on BBC Radio – Guy Garvey’s Finest Hour.)

Enjoying 
AH: The change of seasons brings many rainbows in nipaluna/Hobart

Andy Hutson Autoflora runs from 19 April - 20 May 2023