Deep, Dark, Desperate / Eat Your Saints

Melbourne Art Review: Can you tell us a bit about your arts practice? Deborah Prior: I work primarily with craft processes and materials – knitting, embroidery, stitching – to make soft sculptural assemblages, bad quilts, and other fabric oddities that explore the strangeness of being and having a body – specifically female bodies and “feminine” bodies and behaviour. When I was 13 a Society & Environment teacher yelled at me “Stop Being an Annoying Little Feminist,” and obviously this has continued to inspire me ever since – my work taps into all of those those fears of the leaky, unreliable, corporeal female body and turns pretty handicrafts on their head…sometimes my work can look polite and pretty at first glance but’s actually loud, annoying, and deliberately disgusting. Most recently I’ve been researching religious relics and ex voto alongside museum specimens (all fragmented bodies) as a way to look at science and religion together and in opposition. Medicine and Christianity are both huge socio-cultural drivers that can be deeply unfriendly to anyone with an ‘abnormal’ or ‘sinful’ body. I’m obviously very interested in female experiences, but there is space for everyone…the art I’m making these days is also influenced by my own lived experience of perilous mental health and chronic pain which can be specifically female and also speak to a broader spectrum of bodies and identities. I discover and collect inspiration from all over. For example, for “Deep, Deep, Desperate / Eat Your Saints” (upcoming exhibition at KINGS ARI) I’ve been inspired by the story and veneration of St Agatha of Sicily but have also spent a lot of time on Instagram researching “wellness” and “clean eating” which is this giant cesspit of opportunistic marketing and full-blown orthorexia. Eat Your Saints is a big pushback against good behavior, lady-like appetites, and the all-pervasive language of dieting, and bodily surveillance and maintenance. There are a lot of fantastic, crafty artists in Melbourne that inspire me: Anna Dunnill, Casey Jenkins, and Kate Just are all up there for me. Josephine Mead has just written a painfully brilliant text for Jess and I through the Kings Emerging Writers Program so I’m looking forward to seeing more of her art and writing. Back home in Adelaide, I’m constantly inspired by Sera Waters and Carly Snoswell. They both seem to have magical powers and can transform the daggiest, oddest craft materials into sublime creations. I’ve always enjoyed making stuff and over thinking things so being an artist was probably inevitable. I went straight on to art school after Year 12 and knew instantly I was in terrible trouble and was in for a life of hard work, cheap wine, and a scant super fund. After my undergraduate degree I was lucky enough to spend three months travelling the UK and Europe thanks to a Ruth Tuck Visual Arts Scholarship (Carclew Youth Arts, SA). It was the first time I’d left Australia and whilst in London I was under the influence of my brilliant, hell-raising aunt who really shaped my thinking about museums, curation and the politics of collecting…. this together with the discovery of a number of medical museums and medical libraries, really set me on my current path. At some point about a decade ago I managed an eight-month stint in a regular job before it became unbearable and I decided a PhD was a better idea. I’m now a fully qualified doctor of knitting and abject crafting and make lovely, terrible things in my living room around a very strange day-job that is a constant source of inspiration but which I cannot confess up to on a cool Arts forum. MAR: Wow, that’s amaizng! What’s the best piece of advice you have for us from your journey so far? DP: Never eat the gelato decorated with fancy mountains of fruit and chocolate that populate all the bars near the big tourist attractions in Italy. It is never too hot to spend time locating the proper gelaterias in the backstreets that store their wares in sensible stainless steel tubs with lids. Not only is the gelato far superior, you won’t end up in a Florentine emergency room with dire food poisoning. MAR: And what would be a highlight from your career so far? DP: In 2016 I spent three months living in Rome thanks to the Helpmann Academy British School at Rome Residency. I still pinch myself two years later – it really was a dream period of getting to focus entirely on practice and trekking about the city and beyond hunting for incorruptible saints and other strange religious relics. I made a very pink and fleshy hanging textile work – Lupa – inspired by the Roman experience, and the legendary She Wolf who nurses Romulus and Remus. When I exhibited this work back in Australia the following year, two tiny twin girls in matching pink dresses were at the opening and when they saw Lupa they immediately ran up to her and hugged her and started playing with her, which was a fairly perfect moment. MAR: Can you tell us a bit more about your upcoming exhibition at KINGS opening this Friday the 3 August? DP: It’s a collaborative show with one of my current art crushes, Jess Taylor. We’ve called it “Deep, Dark, Desperate / Eat Your Saints” and it’s all of those things. I’m both excited and a slightly nervous because although I’ve snuck some textiles in, it’s mostly performance work, something I don’t do very often. The exhibition is an investigation of individual and collective acts of violence through a Feminist lens and we’ll be offering our audience chocolate and wax votives cast from our bodies that have been designed for symbolic acts of immolation and cannibalism. We’re really interested in implicating the audience and are interested to see how far people are willing to go…. We’ve been inspired by horror films, violent martyrdoms, saints and witches, body horror and abjection, and the transformative-melty-movement of chocolate and wax. I’ll be spending the duration of the opening performance eating as many chocolate breasts (cast from mine) as I possibly can but there is plenty to share around if you find yourself alone and hungry on a Friday night in the city…there should be about 6 kilograms of chocolate at my table. If that doesn’t take your fancy you can set Jess on fire…sort of…she’s made these deeply disturbing prayer candles with 3D printing technology, and giant vat of beeswax in her kitchen. It’s all deeply silly and deadly serious. I think we’ve given the gallery committee a few headaches! MAR: Amazing. I can’t wait to experience this Friday evening! What do you think is the best thing about exhibiting in Melbourne as an artist? DP: Population wise, there’s just this critical mass in Melbourne… it’s more culturally and socially diverse than home. I’ve taken trips to Melbourne where I’ve not stepped foot inside one gallery and just walked the streets, soaking up the city. I’ve always stubbornly refused to get a driver’s license, so I am a big fan of Melbourne’s trains and trams too. MAR: Do you have a favourite space in Melbourne? DP: Being a craft nerd, I always enjoy visiting the Australian Tapestry Workshop. I’ve seen some fantastic shows in their adjoining exhibition space, and I always buy more yarn than I can afford. Blindside always has an interesting program and last time I visited, I found this amazing bead shop in the Nicholas building (craft nerd) but I’ve heard a rumour it’s closed now… Last year I exhibited at Trocadero Art Space which was great experience – I have lots of fond memories of the gallery and Footscray. I also have an obsession with Beatrix bakery in North Melbourne, and I expect I’ll have cake for lunch for the duration of our upcoming installation week at Kings. MAR: You’re quite prolific and have exhibited a lot in Melbourne at various ARI’s and spaces, so what’s next for you? DP: In August I will be spending a week walking as long and as far as I can over the course of seven days. It all started because I wanted to make a sculpture for a landscape prize…but I think my practice quite often teeters at the edge of something a bit extreme (in the words of Freddie Robins, craft kills). I bought a pair of cheap canvas shoes to wear that will become the canvas of seven days of exertion. I’m hoping to walk over 200 kilometers through urban and rural landscapes. A lot of the walking will be in the dark because I’ve still got to go to work! It must be hereditary because my father rode his bicycle from Adelaide to Tenant Creek, then to Brisbane, and back to Adelaide a few years ago. And if I survive the week of walking my next big studio project is a textile collage I’ve been ruminating over for most of 2018 – I need to do something with an obsessive collection of thirty years’ worth of pot-plant tags that I inherited from my Grandmother. I’m not sure if she remembers her garden anymore, but she carefully saved a record of everything she ever planted. MAR: Thanks so much Deb! "Deep, Dark, Desperate / Eat Your Saints” opens this Friday 3 August from 6pm at KINGS ARI in the city.