The Mater Podcast

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  @heidilynnheidilynnFind 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: @wildclayretreatWe 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

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=enMick Sheridan: https://www.instagram.com/m.s.upholstery/?hl=enNicola 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=enThe Meddling Fiend at The Royal Academy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7gVTwxvhPkJulie Ann Sheridan: https://www.instagram.com/sheridanjulieann/Sadie Campbell: https://www.instagram.com/sadiedidi/Find us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/?hl=enOur website: https://mater.digital/

A fascinating conversation with Deborah Tchoudjinoff and Oscar Salguero about geology, minerals, technology and fictionDeborah 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_ffOscar is on Instagram at softcorenyFind us on Instagram at Mater________Our website it mater.digitalProjects & people referenced:The Toaster Project, Thomas Thwaites, 2011Neo Mineralia, Oscar SalgueroSae Honda, Everybody Needs a RockWorks by Deborah Tchoudjinoff Ceramic Material AtlasLehman BrothersEarth Emotions by Glenn Albrecht

This week I’m joined by Miriam Sentler and Paulina Blaesild, to speak about deep time matters, art, archeology and the act of swimmingMiriam 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_Tp6D3QKarlsson, 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

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 networksZayaan 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 aboutSeedworkLand reformSpiritual connection with the landThe land having a memorySouth AfricaKentuckyRematriationFind Zayaan Khan and Chris KeeveFollow us on Instagram or visit our websiteOther projects: Truelove Seeds, The Heirloom Collard Project

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 kirstygracesRoy Oxlade book Art and Instinct Amy Sillman Faux PasKate Bush Mother Stands for ComfortGlossary of Dying Terms:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_dyeing_termsFollow us on Instagram or visit our website

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 cityFind Tom Chivers' Soundcloud with Thames sounds hereFollow Tom on InstagramFind more work by Claire hereClaire on LinkedInA few notes about mudlarking and the foreshore: Anyone searching the foreshore in any way for any reason requires permission from the Port of London Authorityhttps://pla.co.uk/thames-foreshore-permitsThere 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

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!