Something To Do With Art

Karen Eng is a writer and artist who works in both analogue and digital media. She has experimented with VR, blockchain and NFTs, and is especially interested in art as a catalyst for innovation, cooperation and creating communities.

My conversation with Karen took place at her home in King’s Lynn where she told me about her involvement in a large-scale sci-fi time travel adventure taking place around the town. The multi-media installation is the culmination of a two-year project run by Collusion to use art and technology to find new and positive ways to engage people with the perils of climate change. We then took to the streets to see the artworks in situ.

So I wanted to catch up with Karen to find out about how she uses art as a force for social engagement and change, but I was also intrigued to learn more about her use of technology. Karen is an early adopter and an experimenter: by her own admission she has a restless curiosity about all forms of art making – whether it is letterpress and pastels or VR and crypto.

In this episode Karen also tells me about the importance of finding a supportive online community, and how the brave new world of crypto art is here to stay.

You can listen to this episode here: https://soundcloud.com/robertgood_art/karen-eng

Next week: Madi Acharya-Baskerville discusses her mixed media sculptures that she makes using found objects and discarded ephemera, and we attempt to find cake.

Egidija Čiricaitė is an artist, poet and PhD candidate at the Slade School of Fine Art and UCL Linguistics, where she is researching Relevance Theory and metaphor.

My conversation with Egidija took place at her home in South London, where she has a small office and creative space, crammed full with notes, books, materials and papers. Down the middle hangs what appears to be a washing line, pegged up with pages of drawings, ideas and experiments. We began, however, in the kitchen, where I attempted to pronounce Egijia’s surname – with mixed results.

I particularly wanted to catch up with Egidija because I wanted to find out more about the world of book arts. I am interested myself in the interplay between the visual and the verbal, but I confess that I have never really ‘got’ artists books, so I was hoping to find out where I was going wrong.

In this episode we talk about how books function as cultural objects, how our preconceptions inform our expectations of what the contents might be and how readers of books are portrayed on social media. We also discuss the relationship between academic research and artistic practice – what, if any, is the link between the two?

I especially liked the way in which Egidija tells me how she finally decided that she had become a poet, and I remember in this regard thinking at the time how vividly Egidija was able to describe scenes and situations she was talking about. I also enjoyed hearing about Relevance Theory and the way in which our brains construct reality from their surroundings.

Thank you to Egidija for a fascinating visit.

You can listen to this episode here: https://soundcloud.com/robertgood_art/egidija-ciricaite

Next week: Karen Eng takes me on a tour of Kings Lynn to see some large scale outdoor projections and we discuss her early adoption of new technologies such as VR, AR and NFTs.

My conversation with Amanda Couch took place at the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading, where Amanda is co-curator and contributing artist for The Commons: Re-Enchanting the World, a collaborative artistic response to the many ways in which the commons – land, air and water – are a vital shared social resource.

I particularly wanted to catch up with Amanda because I was intrigued by the way in which she uses guts, entrails, offal and all things intestinal in her work – where did this interest come from and how does it manifest itself in her work? Her answer definitely surprised me and was not what I was expecting!

In this episode Amanda prepares me a picnic to sample some of her foraged food – an offer which I couldn’t resist – although things don’t quite go according to plan, and I attempt to persuade Amanda that I have wild carrot growing in my garden.

I especially liked the way in which Amanda considers her role as an artist not so much as a creator of a work as an initiator of a process. Amanda also pointed out to me (sadly during a moment when we were not recording) that she thinks this podcast forms part of my research practice, which I had never thought of, but she is right: it is my way of learning more about the artistic process.

The sound quality in this episode is not the best in places, as our outdoor conversation takes place against a backdrop – rather fittingly, in the context of Amanda’s concerns to re-engage with community and tradition – of families enjoying an afternoon out in a shared open space.

Many thanks to Amanda for a lovely visit.

You can listen to this episode here: https://soundcloud.com/robertgood_art/amanda-couch

Next week: Egidija Čiricaitė discusses artists books and her researches into relevance theory.