WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.000 Hi everybody. I'm Serena Bentley. I'm the senior curator here at the National Portrait Gallery 2 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:12.000 and I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners 3 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:15.000 of the land, the Ngunnawal, Ngunawal and Ngambri people 4 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:22.000 and pay my respect to elders past and present and by extension to any First Nations people with us today 5 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:29.000 and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. It gives me great pleasure today to introduce 6 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:35.000 Nathan Beard. So Nathan is a Perth-born, Melbourne-based artist. He's an interdisciplinary artist 7 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:42.000 working across a range of media, photography, sculpture, installation, who often draws on his 8 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:50.000 own personal archive and family archive as a means of exploring broader ideas of identity and 9 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:57.000 the diasporic experience and ideas of tines and nationalism. We're going to keep things super casual 10 00:00:57.000 --> 00:01:03.000 today, very casual chat. There will be room for questions at the end. But to begin with, 11 00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:08.000 I'm very curious. You do have ties to Canberra. Is that right? You have family connections here? 12 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:19.000 Yeah. After my mum and dad married, they initially relocated to Canberra. My dad was working 13 00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:23.000 for the federal police at the time. And so Canberra was my mother's first experience of Australian 14 00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:27.000 culture. And she hated it because it was. 15 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:31.000 was the middle of winter, I think, when she moved here. Also, she caught a plane to the wrong 16 00:01:31.000 --> 00:01:36.000 city. She ended up flying to Sydney instead, and so my dad had to leave, work early and drive 17 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:42.000 to Sydney to pick her up from the airport. So that's my little bit of family law. Did she become 18 00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:48.000 acclimatised to Canberra? Look, she didn't have to suffer through it for very long. I think they 19 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:51.000 moved back to Perth about three years afterwards. So she had to enjoy three winters. 20 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:57.000 Okay. Okay. All right. We'll talk about a bit more about your mum. But in the first, 21 00:01:57.000 --> 00:02:03.000 instance, it's really interesting how the family archive or these personal materials 22 00:02:03.000 --> 00:02:07.000 and photographs are incredibly important to your practice and sort of the basis of the basis 23 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:13.000 of a lot of your work. What is it that motivates you to use this as material within your work? 24 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:21.000 I think for me it's that the images managed to simultaneously evoke a sense of familiarity 25 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:27.000 and exclusion and because of this tension that exists in images of 26 00:02:27.000 --> 00:02:34.000 family who I recognize situated in context which are unfamiliar to me, that's what I find 27 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:40.000 sort of like a really generative space to work in, thinking about how visual material and found imagery 28 00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:52.000 can sort of be used as a starting point to stir up, I guess, more, yeah, more rigorous ideas of 29 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:56.000 displacement and identity. Yeah. And so if you're using 30 00:02:56.000 --> 00:03:02.000 source material of photographs, say for instance, from your mother's past from a time before 31 00:03:02.000 --> 00:03:09.000 you were born, do you find that that evokes a sense of closeness to her as well, or is it 32 00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:15.000 about trying to connect with her in different ways? Yeah, definitely. I think a lot of the interest 33 00:03:15.000 --> 00:03:20.000 in working with these sort of found images is that technically they might not have a lot of 34 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:26.000 resolve or polish, but through the act of like selecting 35 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:32.000 them and choosing to expand a generous amount of time working across the surfaces 36 00:03:32.000 --> 00:03:39.000 of them. It's a process of like adding value to the imagery and forcing them or thrusting them 37 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:44.000 in front of an audience as a way of sort of like elevating the material. And for me, that gesture 38 00:03:44.000 --> 00:03:51.000 essentially is like this form of affection or love or placemaking as well. Yes. And that is so, 39 00:03:51.000 --> 00:03:55.000 so palpable in your work that that degree of reverence and sensitivity 40 00:03:55.000 --> 00:04:00.000 for your subjects is so tangible, I think, particularly when you look at the works that were 41 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:07.000 included in Bloom here. But maybe if we focus first on Siamese Smize behind us, so these are 42 00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:14.000 images, I mean, essentially all of the works included here are kind of about your mum, right? 43 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:20.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And in direct and indirect ways. Yes. And so behind us, 44 00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:25.000 these images that were found or the source materials found from her home in Thailand, is that 45 00:04:25.000 --> 00:04:30.000 Correct. So shortly after my young, my grandmother and my mother's side passed away 46 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:44.000 and sort of the early 90s. By that point, the house had only been unoccupied for about 10 years. 47 00:04:45.000 --> 00:04:52.000 So then we went back there and this is before I started school. We were 48 00:04:52.000 --> 00:04:55.000 living in the house for a little bit, and my brother was being homeschooled there. 49 00:04:55.000 --> 00:05:04.000 my older brother. And then, yeah, my mom and dad left Thailand after trying to sort of start 50 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:09.000 there after my dad had sort of retired, except it's like a redundancy package. And then the house was 51 00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:15.000 essentially like boarded up and closed again. So within there, there was sort of like family artifacts, 52 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:21.000 clothing, furniture and photo albums that were sort of sat untouched while that house was essentially 53 00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:25.000 sealed for another 20, 25 years when it wasn't occupied. 54 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:31.000 part at all. And yeah, it was next door to my uncle's place. So he was sort of like a 55 00:05:31.000 --> 00:05:35.000 custodian over the house and made sure that there were no squatters or anything like that. But it's a 56 00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:41.000 very small province. Everybody in the Kong knows each other. So all the families, you know, 57 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:48.000 very respectful of the space. But then going back there for the first time in over 20 years in 58 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:55.000 in 2013, 2014, it was this sort of treasure trove of images that, 59 00:05:55.000 --> 00:06:01.000 immediately evoked a nostalgia for a time which I vaguely recognised because the images kind of 60 00:06:01.000 --> 00:06:10.000 stop where I was there, the more recent images in those albums. So yeah, that's the sort of origin 61 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:15.000 story behind this sort of like wealth of photographic material. And the images in this series in 62 00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:23.000 particular are all pictures of my mother when she was very young. So probably just before 63 00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:28.000 she had met my father as well. Yeah, right. And so they're all dated from around the mid to late 64 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:38.000 70s. Yeah, and it's very, it's very much a huge selection of portraits of her and her friends and 65 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:44.000 other family members in front of these plain backdrops that were taken at local dances and things 66 00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:48.000 that were held at the temple, I'm pretty sure, the local temple in the Conny York. Yeah. 67 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:53.000 And let's talk a bit more about the way in which you kind of subverted or 68 00:06:53.000 --> 00:06:57.000 or complicated these images. Because obviously you're dealing with this personal family 69 00:06:57.000 --> 00:07:01.000 history, but at the same time, often in your work, these strands of popular culture come into 70 00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:06.000 play. So if we think about the title of the work, it's called Siamese Smize, which I really 71 00:07:06.000 --> 00:07:12.000 appreciate being a fan of Tyra Bank. So Tyra Banks is the supermodel who popularised the term 72 00:07:12.000 --> 00:07:17.000 Smize, which means smiling with the eyes. And then also we've got the use of the Swarovski 73 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:22.000 crystal as a material, which is something you've observed as like a contemporary fashion trend. 74 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:28.000 So can you talk a bit more about the popular culture aspects that you've subverted in these works? 75 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:36.000 Yes. So the term smiles is essentially smiling with the eyes. 76 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:41.000 And in these images, they're riffing on the idea of the Siamese smile, 77 00:07:41.000 --> 00:07:47.000 used as sort of like a touristic slogan to promote travel to Thailand, 78 00:07:47.000 --> 00:07:50.000 and that movement sort of started in the 1980s. 79 00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:58.000 and it's a sort of slippery area to explore coming from a Thai perspective 80 00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:05.000 because there are so many micro variations on smiles that carry different cultural meanings 81 00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:10.000 depending on the context. And this is all information that sort of gets very lost from a Western 82 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:16.000 perspective if all you're consuming is this idea of a smile being sort of in something that's 83 00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:16.000 in service. 84 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:19.000 And so 85 00:08:19.000 --> 00:08:24.000 the Smize portion of this comes from the fact that I'm deliberately obliterating 86 00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:31.000 like facial cues through these masks of crystals. And so the subject's mouths are floating above 87 00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:36.000 the surface of them, but the smile is sort of contained in the eyes. So that's the little 88 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:42.000 Tyro Banks throwback. Also in cycle six of America's next spot model, they did go to Thailand 89 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:47.000 as well as part of the go seas. Yeah, so that was the international destination. So there's 90 00:08:47.000 --> 00:08:49.000 like that little extra thread as well. 91 00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:59.000 with regards to the Swarovski crystals as well, they specifically evoke the use of glass 92 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:03.000 ornamentation that's threaded throughout all sorts of Thai craft and design. 93 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:10.000 Buddhist statues, Buddhist shrines, temple displays and traditional costuming and dance costuming 94 00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:17.000 all have sort of fragments of mirror or polished glass or sometimes like stones that are 95 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:19.000 embedded throughout as this form of decoration. 96 00:09:19.000 --> 00:09:25.000 And I was sort of fascinated how more contemporary trends towards design in Thailand 97 00:09:25.000 --> 00:09:30.000 on shrines incorporate, like, literal Swarovski crystals being hand-applied as well. 98 00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:36.000 And they sort of evoke like, yeah, flashy iPhone cases and all of that sort of stuff. 99 00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:39.000 So like, when I started working Swarovski crystals in these photographs, 100 00:09:39.000 --> 00:09:44.000 it was because I went to Thai marketplaces to sort of buy shrine statues and shrine materials like 101 00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:49.000 gold leaf, but then at the same stalls, I'd see women just sort of like hand-applying. 102 00:09:49.000 --> 00:09:54.000 stones in the back of phone cases. And the stones were also sold at this same shops as well 103 00:09:54.000 --> 00:10:00.000 as materials for sort of decorating and adding this sense of reverence to domestic shrines bases. 104 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:06.000 And in terms of the labour involved, just out of curiosity, so these are hand-applied. 105 00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:07.000 Yes, yes. 106 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:10.000 How long does this take you? 107 00:10:12.000 --> 00:10:18.000 To cover, I timed it once, and it was shocking to me, but to cover an area about this. 108 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:23.000 about this big, using lots of irregular crystals to tessellate them very tightly and together. 109 00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:29.000 It takes about an hour. So you kind of have to expand that and multiply it for each thing. 110 00:10:31.000 --> 00:10:36.000 With some of the patent ones, I was tracing the lines of the patterns on the surface of photograph 111 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:42.000 and able to sort of like fill in those sort of like mosaiced areas. But yeah, that labour required 112 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:48.000 has to have the small crystals next to the bigger crystals because it creates a more dynamic flash 113 00:10:48.000 --> 00:10:53.000 when you walk past themselves. So they reflect the light much more dynamically and viscerally 114 00:10:53.000 --> 00:10:59.000 than if it was sort of an even layering of the same crystal size. Yeah. So it's like a tessellation? 115 00:10:59.000 --> 00:11:05.000 Yes. Okay. That sounds stressful. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of pushing stones around in while the adhesive 116 00:11:05.000 --> 00:11:11.000 is that syringe applied is still a little bit wet and accommodating so you can kind of slide things in place 117 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:17.000 and they'd lock in. Wow. Okay. And is that relaxing and meditative for you? Or are you doing other things at the 118 00:11:17.000 --> 00:11:22.000 same time. No, very relaxing. When I was making this series, there used to be YouTube compilations 119 00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:29.000 of entire seasons of America's next stop model. So each like compiled video was about seven to nine 120 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:34.000 hours. So I would, you know, there's only like 16 seasons that I could work through. So like I 121 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:38.000 obviously watch more than that in the creation of the series. But yeah, it was definitely a back of mind. 122 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:46.000 Now in terms of where your work is situated here, most of the work of Nathan's and in Bloom is in this room. 123 00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:55.000 There's another sculpture in Gallery 6. But this room is essentially a space of matriarchal 124 00:11:55.000 --> 00:12:00.000 intensity. This is a space of power women. We've got some philanthropists who've been involved 125 00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:04.000 in the establishment of the gallery. We've got a former Governor General. We've got a Sydney 126 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:11.000 socialite. And we have Noi Beard, Nathan's mum. And so obviously we've talked about her a little 127 00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:16.000 bit. And obviously mothers are so formative and influential on all of our lives. 128 00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:23.000 But she seems like she was an incredible supporter of your practice and collaborator. 129 00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:26.000 Like, how is she infused within your practice? 130 00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:34.000 My, she was a very, you know, generous but sort of hesitant subjects a lot of the time. 131 00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:46.000 But I, my interest in sort of exploring this idea of Thai culture is formed through the matrilineal bond. 132 00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:52.000 everything that I was sort of raised around with regards to sort of tines and my understanding 133 00:12:52.000 --> 00:13:02.000 of it came through her and her efforts to incorporate elements of her home into the house that I was 134 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:09.000 brought up in in in Perth. So from things like religion and domestic shrines around the house, 135 00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:15.000 the garden and the types of fruits and vegetables that she would plant there, that sort of reminds her of home. 136 00:13:16.000 --> 00:13:21.000 to sort of religion in the sense of like going to temple for specific Buddhist holidays, 137 00:13:22.000 --> 00:13:27.000 the army of Thai women and aunties that she surrounded herself with. 138 00:13:29.000 --> 00:13:35.000 There was just like all of these elements that sort of added up to an experience of Thailand 139 00:13:35.000 --> 00:13:36.000 outside of it. 140 00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:43.000 And I was interested in the sort of slipperiness of it and the contradiction and how authentic that 141 00:13:43.000 --> 00:13:43.000 experiences. 142 00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:46.000 But also the sort of potential. 143 00:13:46.000 --> 00:13:52.000 within that to sort of like really stretch broader understandings of like what it is to constitute 144 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:56.000 like a national identity in an era of globalization and mobilization as well. 145 00:13:58.000 --> 00:14:03.000 This sort of experience of like the diasporic individual in the middle of it sort of blends a lot of 146 00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:07.000 those edges and can be sort of like a really liberating space. 147 00:14:07.000 --> 00:14:12.000 So also a really confined one as well, a really limiting one. 148 00:14:12.000 --> 00:14:21.000 but yeah, so her as a conduit to sort of channel these ideas definitely made sense while 149 00:14:21.000 --> 00:14:23.000 she was available to me to use as a subject. 150 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:31.000 Her experience as a migrant, like a lot of that, the reason why I was wanting to focus on her as a person 151 00:14:31.000 --> 00:14:37.000 was to elevate the status of her as a sort of overlooked person in society as well and sort 152 00:14:37.000 --> 00:14:42.000 of give a sense of preservation around her and sort of to archive her and to elevate her and to 153 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:46.000 elevate her within a context that sort of sits outside both of us as well. 154 00:14:47.000 --> 00:14:51.000 Within that, I'm sort of aware of like how it speaks more universally to other people as well. 155 00:14:51.000 --> 00:14:56.000 Although I'm working from a lens specifically of Thainess and Thailand and my relationship to it, 156 00:14:56.000 --> 00:15:02.000 my fraught relationship to it, how slippery the edges of it are, I think it's sort of approachable 157 00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:12.000 from much broader understandings of place and self and how you create meaning out of the 158 00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:15.000 the inheritances that you have as well. 159 00:15:17.000 --> 00:15:23.000 It's so interesting this idea of slipperiness because, yes, you're dealing with these very intimate 160 00:15:23.000 --> 00:15:28.000 relationships with members of your family and your own personal experience and you're infusing them 161 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:31.000 with all these other influences from popular culture from Tyra Banks. 162 00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:38.000 How do you traverse those spaces and continue to honour your subjects? 163 00:15:38.000 --> 00:15:41.000 Like, yeah, how do you move between 164 00:15:41.000 --> 00:15:44.000 authenticity and authenticity. 165 00:15:44.000 --> 00:16:03.000 I think it's generally reflective of a sense of a sense of play and wanting to use sort of a lightness 166 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:10.000 or I guess a flashiness to draw. 167 00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:12.000 people in initially. 168 00:16:14.000 --> 00:16:22.000 So, yeah, it's a lot of the times the work that I make situates itself between the sort of playful and 169 00:16:22.000 --> 00:16:23.000 serious as well. 170 00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:31.000 Yeah, I just think that that sort of attention is really fascinating or generative for an audience 171 00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:33.000 and it's also quite inclusive as well. 172 00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:39.000 And I think maybe another thing that draws people in, particularly with the work that we're 173 00:16:39.000 --> 00:16:40.000 sitting next to here is. 174 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:50.000 actually beauty. And so this work when it was unpacked downstairs was quite 175 00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:56.000 astounding to see for the first time. It's exquisitely beautiful. And you can see that care and 176 00:16:56.000 --> 00:17:00.000 labour involved in its fabrication. Can you tell us more about it? 177 00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:10.000 So the work is titled Noi, after my mum's nickname, which is the Thai word for little or short. 178 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:16.000 And originally was presented so that the eye line of it was sat around her 179 00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:19.000 eyeline as well. So when you were walking around in a space, you were kind of like looking her in the eye. 180 00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:29.000 And the work is made up of cut up strips of the Thai silk sarongs and one sort of synthetic 181 00:17:29.000 --> 00:17:35.000 floral slip that she wore around the house. But Thai silk sarongs that she would wear usually for special 182 00:17:35.000 --> 00:17:39.000 occasions. And those special occasions were generally focused around Buddhist holidays at Temple. 183 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:40.000 So there was traditional times. 184 00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:46.000 patterns and fabrics that she would adorn herself in as a sort of beacon of cultural pride. 185 00:17:47.000 --> 00:17:53.000 And then she would, yeah, wear those to temple as a way of sort of impressing the rest of the 186 00:17:53.000 --> 00:17:56.000 Thai community around her. Everyone would be wearing the same sort of sarongs together. 187 00:17:56.000 --> 00:18:07.000 It's really quite a nice little thing to reflect upon. But after her passing, most of the 188 00:18:07.000 --> 00:18:10.000 clothing that she had with her was in Thailand and donated. 189 00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:16.000 cremated alongside her. So these were the sarongs that were left behind in Australia. 190 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:20.000 There was this sense that like these were the items of clothing that she was intending on 191 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:27.000 returning to and that she was valuing enough to sort of like keep behind so that she could 192 00:18:27.000 --> 00:18:34.000 still like adorn herself and dress herself with. The Bai Sri itself is a 193 00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:40.000 an offering that's generally left at shrines and it's produced to sort of 194 00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:44.000 bring good fortune and auspiciousness. And it's usually made from carefully 195 00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:53.000 pleaded and folded strips of banana leaves and banana stems and 196 00:18:53.000 --> 00:18:58.000 usually has like floral embellishments on the top of it as well, like marigolds and 197 00:18:58.000 --> 00:19:04.000 different buds as well. And the idea behind them is that they're made out of this sort of perishable 198 00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:10.000 material. They end up returning. Bananas grow in very, grow very resistant. 199 00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:16.000 in all types of environments and muddy soils. So symbolically, they're this symbol 200 00:19:16.000 --> 00:19:28.000 of like regeneration and growth. And so I also was drawing on a fabric versions of Bai Sri that you can 201 00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:33.000 buy to have these sort of like permanent things in domestic shrine spaces as well. They're not 202 00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:37.000 too dissimilar to the use of artificial flowers. Like preferably you'd use fresh flowers in a shrine 203 00:19:37.000 --> 00:19:40.000 setting, but sometimes you just want to have like the plastic version of it as well. 204 00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:48.000 well just to sort of have as this beautifying feature. So the challenge was how to sort of 205 00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:57.000 of materially think about letting go of objects and repurposing the fabric from her sarongs in a similar 206 00:19:57.000 --> 00:20:02.000 way to the pedal embellishments that were made out of fabric that were attached to these 207 00:20:02.000 --> 00:20:10.000 sort of like commercially available Bai Sri. And so yeah, it was a process of sort of sort of cutting into very 208 00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:16.000 thin strips and hand folding and stapling and then pinning, removing a staple, and 209 00:20:16.000 --> 00:20:22.000 then slowly making my way down the cones to sort of like build this stretched out form that 210 00:20:22.000 --> 00:20:27.000 is, it's an exaggerated form of a bias. Some of them can be very sort of over the top and 211 00:20:27.000 --> 00:20:34.000 lux. This is based on a simpler form of a Bai Sri, but with its own sense of elongation and 212 00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:40.000 sort of manipulation of scale in there as well. And yeah, the other remarkable thing was when I was 213 00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:47.000 going through a lot of the other clothes that she had left behind. So much of it was floral printed 214 00:20:47.000 --> 00:20:53.000 as well. So there's this incorporation of like a cheaper, more comfortable slip that she would wear 215 00:20:53.000 --> 00:20:58.000 around the house for as opposed to this sort of like stiff formal silk that sort of weaved into there as 216 00:20:58.000 --> 00:21:05.000 as well. The idea behind the work was to create this sort of like monument to her taste and sort of like 217 00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:10.000 create an impression or an idea of her through her material belongings and let 218 00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:16.000 go of those and generate a form that sort of abstracts this sense of portraiture of her as 219 00:21:16.000 --> 00:21:31.000 well. The other thing is that the intricate leading is borrowed from like a very traditionally 220 00:21:31.000 --> 00:21:37.000 feminized form of labour. It's generally women that make the Bai Sri in a temple. And so it's the aunties 221 00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:40.000 and the nuns that would gather around and they would be the ones 222 00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.000 holding strips together and stapling them and pinning them together, using really provisional 223 00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:51.000 materials like foam blocks and bamboo skewers and staples as the sort of support structures 224 00:21:51.000 --> 00:21:59.000 for everything as well. So all of the sculptures by you included in this exhibition are essentially 225 00:21:59.000 --> 00:22:08.000 based on floral forms. On the inverse to the beauty of Noi, there is an heirloom 226 00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:13.000 behind us here. And I feel like a lot of us have gone on a complex journey with this 227 00:22:13.000 --> 00:22:21.000 sculpture. And when this sculpture was unearthed downstairs, I think a lot of us had quite strong 228 00:22:21.000 --> 00:22:26.000 body feels when we saw it for the first time. You know, there is a degree of objection at play here. 229 00:22:27.000 --> 00:22:34.000 But funnily enough, I feel like the longer you spend with it, that tenderness that is present 230 00:22:34.000 --> 00:22:38.000 in so much of your work becomes palpable. And interestingly enough, when we 231 00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:45.000 we were installing it. Obviously, it needs to be held very gently. We were holding it like a precious baby. 232 00:22:46.000 --> 00:22:53.000 And obviously it's studded with some of your mother's jewellery. And so there's a real sense 233 00:22:53.000 --> 00:23:00.000 of kind of intimacy and pathos once you get past the freakiness of it all. 234 00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.000 I mean, that was obviously intentional. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, it's interesting 235 00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:08.000 to think about how when I was the thinking of 236 00:23:08.000 --> 00:23:12.000 This idea of inheritance and the material, sort of archive that I was building 237 00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:19.000 to, you know, compliment the photographic one and how I draw upon that to make work about 238 00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:27.000 Thainess. My mother's jewellery was like a pretty big part of that as well. She famously liked to wear 239 00:23:27.000 --> 00:23:31.000 all of her jewellery at once or carried around in a purse with her because she was paranoid about 240 00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:35.000 it getting stolen. So she would always have all her rings, like her ears would have both of those 241 00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:37.000 pairs of earrings in them all the time. 242 00:23:38.000 --> 00:23:45.000 And only until recently when coming in and seeing these, like the sort of the obviousness of like the way that she would 243 00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:51.000 adorn and embellish herself with gems, kind of made sense with why I was using those in sort of two-dimensional works as well. 244 00:23:53.000 --> 00:24:00.000 But yeah, this work was initially inspired because it's like the 245 00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:02.000 foot, this contrasting idea of sort of repulsion and desire. 246 00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:06.000 Like the foot as like a, you know, like a fetish object. 247 00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:12.000 the ways in which, like, I've been casting and moulding with silicon for a while now, 248 00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:21.000 but knowing the material yield of it, just how it could really amplify that idea of repulsion 249 00:24:21.000 --> 00:24:26.000 by being able to contort itself and create sort of impossible fleshy figurations. 250 00:24:28.000 --> 00:24:34.000 So, yeah, you've got that sort of tension between the realistic but also the impossible with it. 251 00:24:36.000 --> 00:24:39.000 And yet the delicate sort of like studding of the jewellery as well. 252 00:24:39.000 --> 00:24:40.000 It's a tender act. 253 00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:46.000 It's a tender act of like elevation and of preserving and archiving and archiving her material 254 00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:49.000 and the tastes of my mother through her belongings. 255 00:24:49.000 --> 00:24:54.000 But it's also through this like grotesque act of piercing as well. 256 00:24:55.000 --> 00:25:05.000 And the idea specifically in Thai culture that like the bottom of a foot is sort of offensive as well. 257 00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.000 Like if you showed it to anybody, it would cause like incredible offence. 258 00:25:09.000 --> 00:25:13.000 And that sort of tension is elaborated on in the way that the work is displayed here 259 00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:21.000 quite highly on the wall because it, um, is quite a taboo thing, really. 260 00:25:21.000 --> 00:25:26.000 Yeah, from that, from that cultural perspective, to have to, like, walk under a foot like that 261 00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:28.000 would be, yeah, and could it be offensive. 262 00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:33.000 We installed it high so people couldn't do it. 263 00:25:33.000 --> 00:25:33.000 Yes. 264 00:25:33.000 --> 00:25:34.000 Yeah. 265 00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:42.000 But Nathan did also make another sculpture specifically for this exhibition, which is in Gallery 6. 266 00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:43.000 It's called Phuang Malai. 267 00:25:43.000 --> 00:25:48.000 And of course, that features a very important piece of your mother's jewellery. 268 00:25:48.000 --> 00:25:50.000 So it's her wedding ring, right? 269 00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:51.000 Yes. 270 00:25:51.000 --> 00:25:59.000 Yeah, her wedding band, which is sort of this teutonic object as far as all of the inherited items of hers was, 271 00:25:59.000 --> 00:26:02.000 just because symbolically it was this sort of, you know, 272 00:26:02.000 --> 00:26:05.000 it's representative of this union between her and my father. 273 00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:08.000 and, you know, she never took it off. 274 00:26:08.000 --> 00:26:11.000 So it was something that was always pressed against her flesh. 275 00:26:11.000 --> 00:26:14.000 And because of her tiny fingers, it was something that I wouldn't be able to wear myself. 276 00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:21.000 So the sort of wishful fulfillment of being able to see what it would look like for me to wear it comfortably 277 00:26:21.000 --> 00:26:24.000 is able to be serviced by like a silicon reproduction of my hand. 278 00:26:26.000 --> 00:26:28.000 But yeah, that even the twisted form of the Phuang Malai, 279 00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:32.000 Phuang Malai is sort of this really ubiquitous floral sort 280 00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:35.000 of embellishment in garland that are peppered all throughout 281 00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.000 Thailand. You can buy them in a traffic jam. People will walk by with a basket 282 00:26:39.000 --> 00:26:46.000 full of them and offer them through the car window. They're just an increasingly like noticeable 283 00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:51.000 decorative feature when you're in Thailand, you start clocking them everywhere. And they're 284 00:26:51.000 --> 00:26:56.000 readily available and again, perishable materials. And they're all made out of flower, flower heads, 285 00:26:56.000 --> 00:27:05.000 stems, buds. And with this work, I wanted to again use the potential of the arms folding 286 00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.000 and on themselves to create this sort of like wraparound effect, which is sort of, you know, 287 00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:12.000 it represents this kind of like union. 288 00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:18.000 And it also has this sort of sense of like creepiness or objection. 289 00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:24.000 And it's part of a way of posing the sort of like the discomfort that I have with kind of like 290 00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:28.000 actually parting with such a sentimental and valuable object as well or situating it 291 00:27:28.000 --> 00:27:30.000 within the context where it has to sit outside of me. 292 00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:33.000 And it honours this kind of like material, 293 00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.000 deregistration, right, like getting, like getting rid of, and dematerializing. 294 00:27:39.000 --> 00:27:42.000 It's sort of like a clutter in your life. And it's sort of like the, that's called 295 00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:51.000 Buddhistness as a concept. And then from my own flesh or the reproduction of my own flesh, 296 00:27:52.000 --> 00:27:57.000 you have these like fields of orchids springing forth. And they're the national flower of Thailand. 297 00:27:57.000 --> 00:28:02.000 Again, like a very ubiquitous decorative feature in Thai, like, own businesses in the 298 00:28:02.000 --> 00:28:05.000 diaspora as well. They're markers of authenticity. 299 00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:08.000 you will see an orchid in a tire restaurant or a massage parlour use and the imagery 300 00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:12.000 that they promote through the licensed stock imagery and that sort of thing. 301 00:28:13.000 --> 00:28:18.000 But then also the orchid itself is like really potent symbolically. 302 00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:25.000 It has this like fascinating ability to be bred and hybridized to create all range of impossible 303 00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:27.000 sorts of patterns and shapes. 304 00:28:28.000 --> 00:28:35.000 You don't need to, if for orchids don't need to anchor down complex root systems in order to thrive, 305 00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.000 they can attach themselves and thrive in tropical climates because that's how they sort of like 306 00:28:39.000 --> 00:28:44.000 gather the moisture that they require to sort of like bloom and spring forth. And so for me like 307 00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:49.000 this orchid becomes this very like potent metaphor for that sort of experience of trying to like 308 00:28:49.000 --> 00:28:56.000 anchor a culture within a diasporic context and how to sort of propagate that and let it flourish and bloom. 309 00:28:56.000 --> 00:29:04.000 So it's got this very sort of like, yeah, it's sort of like gentle themes running through it in service of 310 00:29:04.000 --> 00:29:09.000 the sort of metaphorical power of the ring, you know, as well. 311 00:29:09.000 --> 00:29:10.000 Yeah. 312 00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.000 Yeah, we really feel the weight of responsibility in your mum's ring. 313 00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:21.000 Yeah, yeah. So obviously your work is included in a broader exhibition in Bloom, 314 00:29:21.000 --> 00:29:27.000 which is about the interrelationship between people and flowers or how flowers can be used as 315 00:29:27.000 --> 00:29:33.000 signifiers of identity. Have you seen any surprising interrelationships between your work and 316 00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:34.000 other works in the exhibition? 317 00:29:36.000 --> 00:29:43.000 I mean, the being situated in like the mother room was something that sort of like slowly 318 00:29:43.000 --> 00:29:48.000 dawned upon me as I was walking around the space, which I very much appreciate it. 319 00:29:49.000 --> 00:29:54.000 I like the relationship between having a member of the British royal family situated alongside 320 00:29:54.000 --> 00:30:01.000 a selection of works that sort of processed Thai identity because the idea of the Thai monarchy 321 00:30:01.000 --> 00:30:03.000 is such a like essential, you know, 322 00:30:03.000 --> 00:30:06.000 quote unquote pillar of Thai identity as well. 323 00:30:07.000 --> 00:30:13.000 And my mother especially adored the pomp and ceremony around the British royal family 324 00:30:13.000 --> 00:30:19.000 because for her that was something that, you know, bound Australia and tie together. 325 00:30:19.000 --> 00:30:25.000 It's like, oh, you both like have fealty to a royal family, you know, you both, they're in the gossip 326 00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:28.000 rags and you see them constantly, they're on currency. 327 00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:31.000 So that for her was sort of like this connective tissue between the two cultures. 328 00:30:33.000 --> 00:30:35.000 And she adored specifically Princess Diana. 329 00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:36.000 Oh, I mean, yeah. 330 00:30:38.000 --> 00:30:41.000 Yeah, because she was a glamorous young royal family member. 331 00:30:42.000 --> 00:30:49.000 She kept the memorial Princess Diana calendar up in the bathroom for eight years, I think. 332 00:30:49.000 --> 00:30:52.000 It definitely lasted until I was in high school. 333 00:30:52.000 --> 00:30:52.000 Yeah. 334 00:30:54.000 --> 00:31:01.000 So we might open up to questions in a second, but before we do, you've got a show coming up next year. 335 00:31:01.000 --> 00:31:03.000 You're part of the Adelaide Bayne or what? 336 00:31:03.000 --> 00:31:04.000 What are you making for that? 337 00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:14.000 I am making work that is extending my interest in hands as like an entry point or symbol for 338 00:31:14.000 --> 00:31:18.000 Thai culture and authenticity, Thai authenticity. 339 00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:24.000 So similar to the works, Heirloom and Phuang Malai, they're silicon casts of my own body. 340 00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:30.000 But in this instance, I'm stretching the forms out to sort of ridiculous proportions. 341 00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:33.000 So I think long forearms and. 342 00:31:33.000 --> 00:31:40.000 fingers and attaching bows to each other and really playing with this sort of like 343 00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:48.000 floppiness of them and trying to create this sort of uncanny, creepy, ghoulish forms of my arms 344 00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:53.000 and hands processing a lot of different, yeah, symbols and metaphors for Thai culture 345 00:31:53.000 --> 00:31:56.000 that are threaded throughout a range of media and collections and that sort of thing. 346 00:31:57.000 --> 00:32:01.000 And in terms of how those silicon sculptures are made, it's quite laborious, right? 347 00:32:01.000 --> 00:32:03.000 and it involves different collaborators? 348 00:32:04.000 --> 00:32:05.000 Yes, yes. 349 00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:13.000 So with the two works in this exhibition, they were mostly painted by a collaborator, 350 00:32:13.000 --> 00:32:19.000 Kiana Jones, who does self-taught, like, prosthetic makeup artists. 351 00:32:19.000 --> 00:32:22.000 She did it to learn how to do Halloween gore makeup. 352 00:32:23.000 --> 00:32:27.000 And so I was doing studio one-on-one sessions with her and sort of learning through her. 353 00:32:28.000 --> 00:32:30.000 So I've gotten to the point where I can paint an airbrush myself, 354 00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:31.000 but there was a lot of anything. 355 00:32:31.000 --> 00:32:35.000 anxiety around the object that was to wear my mother's ring. 356 00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:40.000 So I was employing her to sort of do a better job of it than I could. 357 00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:41.000 She has a much lighter touch. 358 00:32:41.000 --> 00:32:47.000 I have a bit more of a heavy-handed spray when I use the airbrush to paint the work. 359 00:32:47.000 --> 00:32:47.000 Yeah. 360 00:32:49.000 --> 00:32:53.000 Yeah, I encourage you to take a closer look at the silicon sculptures because, yeah, 361 00:32:53.000 --> 00:32:56.000 the modelling of the skin is quite remarkable. 362 00:32:56.000 --> 00:32:56.000 Yeah. 363 00:32:58.000 --> 00:32:59.000 Do anyone have questions? 364 00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:01.000 Thank you. 365 00:33:01.000 --> 00:33:02.000 This has been really great. 366 00:33:03.000 --> 00:33:09.000 The works are all so intricate and have so many hours of labour associated with them. 367 00:33:09.000 --> 00:33:14.000 And you were just talking about working with a collaborator on the most recent sculpture. 368 00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:20.000 Have there been real moments of complete failure in trying to pull something together 369 00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:27.000 because of, you know, just going wrong or not working out as you wanted it to? 370 00:33:27.000 --> 00:33:30.000 And have, like, how have you coped with that? 371 00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:32.000 Do you revisit the same work? 372 00:33:32.000 --> 00:33:33.000 Do you adjust it? 373 00:33:34.000 --> 00:33:37.000 Because I just imagine there must be an element of frustration as well. 374 00:33:38.000 --> 00:33:42.000 Yeah, especially sculpting with silicon, it's a very unforgiving material. 375 00:33:43.000 --> 00:33:45.000 If you make a mistake with it, it's very hard to cover it up. 376 00:33:47.000 --> 00:33:52.000 And, you know, funnily enough, it was that commission for Phuang Malai was the most recent work 377 00:33:52.000 --> 00:33:59.000 where there was elements of, yeah, things going wrong at various stages with my collaborator 378 00:33:59.000 --> 00:34:00.000 and myself. 379 00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:02.000 trying to get that across the finish line. 380 00:34:03.000 --> 00:34:08.000 But with that work, it was sort of important to sort of start again 381 00:34:08.000 --> 00:34:11.000 and be given the grace to start again with it, 382 00:34:11.000 --> 00:34:17.000 to have that sort of like guarantee that it has the intended aura 383 00:34:17.000 --> 00:34:19.000 and sort of impact because of the item it's on. 384 00:34:19.000 --> 00:34:21.000 But outside of that, generally, 385 00:34:22.000 --> 00:34:25.000 if I do have studio hiccups and mistakes, 386 00:34:26.000 --> 00:34:29.000 I try to think of ways of recycling or repurposing 387 00:34:29.000 --> 00:34:36.000 the silicon material, even if it's just cutting it up for the use of future moulds and 388 00:34:36.000 --> 00:34:40.000 that sort of stuff and just like retaining it for that type of purpose. 389 00:34:41.000 --> 00:34:44.000 I generally go with the flow, though. 390 00:34:44.000 --> 00:34:45.000 So, yeah. 391 00:34:46.000 --> 00:34:52.000 If I start an idea and I don't like it, I tend to not revisit it later on later on, yeah, unless 392 00:34:52.000 --> 00:34:55.000 I have a bathtub moment of, yeah. 393 00:34:56.000 --> 00:34:59.000 Thank you so much for an amazing talk. 394 00:34:59.000 --> 00:35:03.000 I did have a little question about these two larger works here. 395 00:35:03.000 --> 00:35:05.000 When you get up quite close and intimate, 396 00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:10.000 there's this amazing texture that's kind of almost very reminiscent of like a bubble wrap. 397 00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:13.000 And I was quite intrigued about that. 398 00:35:13.000 --> 00:35:15.000 And I was wondering if you'd be able to talk a little bit more 399 00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:18.000 about that intriguing texture on the beautiful photographs. 400 00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:20.000 Yeah, yeah. 401 00:35:21.000 --> 00:35:25.000 The photographs themselves are extremely small. 402 00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:29.000 So they are wallet-sized portraits that I've done. 403 00:35:29.000 --> 00:35:34.000 very high resolution scans of and slowly expanded to make them monumental. 404 00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:40.000 And part of that is blowing up the textures and having something which is normally so 405 00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:48.000 intimately scaled that you would carry it with you, but give it this elevated sense of 406 00:35:48.000 --> 00:35:53.000 like impact, this aura around it by blowing it up and making it sort of much larger than 407 00:35:53.000 --> 00:35:59.000 it's ever intended to be viewed at. Yeah. So it's like this really beautiful grained photo paper 408 00:35:59.000 --> 00:36:01.000 that's quite tough and resilient. 409 00:36:02.000 --> 00:36:05.000 But that's the text here that you're seeing blown up with it. 410 00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:11.000 So you've explored your mum's Thai identity, 411 00:36:11.000 --> 00:36:14.000 but also how do you grapple with her living in Australia? 412 00:36:14.000 --> 00:36:17.000 Because I know as a New Zealand living in Australia for 15 years 413 00:36:17.000 --> 00:36:19.000 and just actually going through the citizenship process, 414 00:36:19.000 --> 00:36:20.000 I'm still grappling with. 415 00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:21.000 I feel like I'm losing my New Zealandness, 416 00:36:21.000 --> 00:36:24.000 but I'm not very gaining Australianness. 417 00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:26.000 So you're in this really interesting vacuum 418 00:36:26.000 --> 00:36:28.000 that your mum would have lived in in terms of 419 00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:33.000 the two countries. So have you grappled with her Australianness a little bit 420 00:36:33.000 --> 00:36:37.000 and some of it other than some of the materials that she's left behind here 421 00:36:37.000 --> 00:36:40.000 and some of the traditions that she tried to maintain? 422 00:36:41.000 --> 00:36:44.000 Yeah, I mean like even though she devoted half of her life 423 00:36:44.000 --> 00:36:47.000 yeah, in in Australia, 424 00:36:49.000 --> 00:36:55.000 she very much like adopted the language and like self-taught 425 00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:58.000 by watching prisoner. I'm pretty sure she was talking that. 426 00:36:58.000 --> 00:37:01.000 watching soap boxes to learn how to speak English properly. 427 00:37:03.000 --> 00:37:07.000 But outside of that, it's difficult. 428 00:37:07.000 --> 00:37:16.000 There was this sense of, it's like, I think this sense of as an immigrant of colour, 429 00:37:16.000 --> 00:37:21.000 like minimizing herself in certain spaces and sort of like, yeah, 430 00:37:21.000 --> 00:37:25.000 sort of retreating into herself or into her community or into her family as well 431 00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:28.000 because they were sort of like the safe networks and safe spaces for her. 432 00:37:28.000 --> 00:37:39.000 So I guess, yeah, that sort of affected how Australian she was perceived as being, 433 00:37:39.000 --> 00:37:41.000 if that makes sense, yeah. 434 00:37:41.000 --> 00:37:48.000 Just quickly on behalf of the National Portrait Gallery and the audience here, 435 00:37:48.000 --> 00:37:52.000 I'd like to thank Nathan and Serena for their wonderful time today, 436 00:37:52.000 --> 00:37:55.000 but that's just our thanks. 437 00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:58.000 I'm sure you might have some last words you'd like to say. 438 00:37:58.000 --> 00:38:03.000 but I just wanted to jump in there and thank our lovely curator and guest artist today. 439 00:38:04.000 --> 00:38:04.000 Thanks. 440 00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:05.000 Thank you. 441 00:38:08.000 --> 00:38:09.000 It's great having you here. 442 00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:14.000 Yeah, it's been great to work alongside everyone here and sort of have this work. 443 00:38:16.000 --> 00:38:21.000 Yeah, be so prominently displayed, sort of the most eyes I'll ever have on my work, probably. 444 00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:22.000 No. 445 00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:24.000 More to come. 446 00:38:28.000 --> 00:38:30.000 Thank you.