Presented by Poppy Mullins
Pure Rumination with Poppy Mullins; a chat with Soph Gibson on sculpting art and overcoming alienation.
This week, I sat down with Masters student, sculptor, and performance artist Soph Gibson to discuss how conceptualising their artistic process enables them to overcome the awfulness of alienation.
This spring, ScratchThat Magazine is launching a new segment called ‘Pure Rumination’ with me, Poppy Mullins, a creative writing student with Cerebral palsy. Today, I am sitting here with visual art Masters student Soph Gibson.
So, Soph, has doing art as your creative pathway always had a soothing effect on you?
I think some people like to describe art as therapy, but I wouldn’t go that far. It’s an intellectual activity for me as much as a feeling one. But I have always loved to create, and I have always loved to go to shows and see art and enjoy art.
What led you to study art?
It was the class in the high school curriculum that was the most independent. We were able to curate our own exhibition of about twelve works for our high school final assessment, and it gave me total control over not only the creative elements but also the practical elements of how much work I could do and what the work was about.
A university course is structured very differently from how a school might approach a visual arts subject. As ScratchThat’s theme this week is alienation, I just wondered if you wouldn’t mind telling the readers how you managed to combat times of feeling alienated from other artists.
I lean towards working a lot in sculpture, and with fluctuating mobility needs and chronic pain, my limitations caught up to me between the first and second years. This made me consider that even though I may look capable of lifting something or doing performance work like other people, I need to know that I won’t be capable of doing some things. In the second year, instead of doing a long performance work, I chose to film myself falling asleep, where I was actually trying to make my lived experience with my body part of the work.
A lot of the time, I wouldn’t disclose my disability. It wasn’t something that I would feel open about discussing until it became such a core element of the works that I was making. Then, I found myself more able to celebrate it.
People would see the way I experienced my body and the world and go, ‘Wow, that makes me feel a lot of empathy for this object, let alone a whole other human being, and I want to take care of this object in the way that I would a body’. I saw a power in that.
When you say object, do you mean that in your practice, you objectify your body?
I like to use the term sculpture as a proxy. So rather than my body being in the work, a sculptural material, or an object, or a sculpture is subjected to the same sort of constraints that impact me, like heat, gravity, and time, and is a surrogate for the feelings that I feel and the physical endurances I go through.
Are there any places you would go while creating these sculptures that would enable you to feel less alienated?
The Visual Arts precinct had a dedicated studio space for the third-year studio group. I was able to use a height-adjustable desk and chair, and I also had my walker, a bean bag and a picnic mat in there. Having that space 24/7, allowing me to work around fatigue cycles, was really important. There was also this feeling that everyone else had their own sense of alienation. We were all dealing with different things in our lives but making works about those things. So, it was sort of a gathering of the alienated, in that sense.
Did you use that collective in the process of making those works about your body? Or was it all something you decided to do yourself?
There was a lot of collaboration in the studio group. We gave each other a hand in different ways. My friends and the Z10 technicians would lend a hand if I needed help installing something or moving a work. Then, I would help with things that I could help with in return, like editing, writing, lending an ear, or installing things that were more within my capabilities.
It’s quite a process to decide that something you hadn’t previously spoken about would become the centre of your art. Were there any moments of peer feedback that convinced you to keep making art about your body, or was it more just having the place in the studio?
I can’t think of a specific moment, but I think that was because the studio was such a continual, supportive environment. It was more the small encouragement or times when a peer would say, ‘Oh, I understand what you’re trying to do there’ or ‘Oh, that’s just like that experience you told me about’ that made it a generally supportive space.
Okay, so how did that impact your creative decisions as you were making those sculptures and doing that performance art? For example, was there a shift in the materials used for your compositions?
A lot of my works use soy wax, and the reason for that is so people can understand what it’s used for every day, but I treat it as bone, flesh, or fat. The wax’s ability to melt and reconstitute itself, but also to bend and break and fall, meant that it became a constant across a lot of my works that I would manipulate in different ways or with other things added to it. It became a language that I was able to use repeatedly, and in some ways, having peer support and that space of play meant that I could experiment with pushing the boundaries of using that material language without the fear of it being misunderstood.
So, would using that material not usually be considered appropriate for sculpture?
Well, it is used; it’s not super uncommon, but unlike the historical tradition of sculpture as something quite masculine and unwieldy, using things like bronze or wood for really large-scale works, soy wax, for me, meant that I was able to make things that were small and soft for my body to handle.
Okay, so would it be fair to say that you were encouraged to see the work as something that could reflect your sense of self?
Yeah.
Thanks for sharing that, and I’m sure many ScratchThat readers can connect with that sense of how peer feedback can give you support through the creative process. You mentioned before this interview that sculpture has also become the basis of your postgraduate work. How has having a community of artists around you, now that you’re in a postgraduate position, fed into how you approach your potential creative pathway?
In 2023, I had a solo show at Wreckers Art Space, and seeing my work in a gallery that I loved visiting and talking about with my peers was a really impactful moment for me because I saw my work outside the confines of the studio space. Seeing my work presented in an external space broadened my horizons for what I could be capable of and the different audiences that I could potentially reach outside of that bubble of people who are all taught the same or who think the same way. It gave me a sense that there was more out there.
And does that confidence now extend to the physicality of your creative practice as well?
It may sound funny, but it’s almost the opposite. After I graduated, I started working, so I now have casual jobs that I have to keep very flexible around my health needs and my studies. The jobs impact my time spent creating, but I’ve found that when I’m able to create, I make the most of my physical ability at that time. I’ve also found that thinking about something before you make it can still be a part of the process and essential for someone like me.
That’s a really interesting realisation to have come to, particularly at this point in your studies and your career.
Yeah.
Does that mean you now take more time to plan your creations? Or is it that you create something and then spend more time adjusting it?
I think it’s both. I spend more time planning and anticipating how an experiment might end, as well as taking more time to reflect on the making and how it all fits into a bigger picture, which is more aligned with the process of a postgraduate degree.
And that realisation dovetails into the next question I wanted to ask you, which is, as a practitioner who now gives more time to the conceptual nature of your artwork, are there any new places you use to combat a sense of alienation in your practice? Do you occupy spaces that encourage you to reflect on your artistic practice in a more theory-based sense?
Yeah, I think I’ve found myself sitting at benches around campus and reflecting, which may sound a bit ‘woo-woo’, but it really does help, especially in a postgraduate format where you are on your own and no longer have that direct peer support. I have peers around me, but we’re all doing our own projects, so just taking the time to be in the sun, get a coffee, and look for new reflective places around campus is important. Benches near elevators are my go-to, I’d say.
That’s a nice bit of advice for everyone. Find a bench if you are stuck with a creative block.
(laughs) Yep.
And in that sitting and reflecting time, have you ever thought about what might be next on the horizon for you, given you’ve got more confidence in your work now?
I think now, in doing my Masters, I have time for play, as well as for conceptualisation and reading theory. So, unfortunately, I’m not quite sure what’s next, but I’m really enjoying what’s now.
I hope the theory brings you many new and exciting ideas for sculpting out of soy wax.
(laughs) Thanks.
Just before you go, Soph, what’s one book, film, piece of music, or visual art that continues to comfort or inspire you?
I often listen to a whole album on repeat when creating specific works. Odette, the musician, makes really sonically textual albums, which always help me when I create something to look at the smaller details and engage fully in work. An art piece would probably be the work of Eva Hesse, a really important sculptor in the sixties due to her boldness in experimenting and imbuing silliness into what was a masculine and serious and rigid art form of post-minimal sculpture at that time. Eva’s work always inspires me in everything I do.
Well, thanks for pointing our readers in the direction of more artists, and thank you, Soph Gibson, for joining me today to chat about how to get through a sense of alienation in order to make art.
Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.
Poppy Mullins (she/her) is a writer of disability-focused Gothic fiction. She is creator and presenter of interview program Pure Rumination for 4ZZZ’s Incubatorzzz, found on the Zed Digital platform. Poppy is currently in her third year of a Creative Writing degree at QUT. She resides in Brisbane. Follow her on Instagram @poppy_bloss
Soph Gibson (they/them) is an artist, researcher and arts worker from Meanjin Brisbane, currently undertaking a Master of Philosophy in Creative Practice-Led Research at QUT. Using sculpture and installation works, their practice investigates material weaknesses and stoicisms to explore uncomfortable bodily sensations and tensions in line with their lived experience as a queer person with a disability and chronic pain. Follow them on Instagram @sophgibsonart
Edited by: David Uptin and Ashley Commens