In Primordial Storehouse Christiane Shortal creates whimsical other worldly characters, creatures and monsters. Her artworks are characterised by their mysterious details and a playful approach to the unknown and unusual. Ahead of her exhibition she chatted with gallery manager Cameron Ralston. Primordial Storehouse opens Tuesday 23 May and runs to 12 June.
Home in Parentheses, gouache on paper, 300x226mm, 2023
Cameron Ralston: Your use of vibrant colours in these works feels like a progression from previous works. Like you’re leaning into a more playfully vibrant style.
Christiane Shortal: I think I’m slowly getting more confident with colour. The first exhibition I did was just black and white.
A lot of the time when I go to shows I feel quite naive or childish because I feel the stuff in the shows that I like are often quite fun. Maybe I’m trying to capture a bit of that. When I lived in Auckland in 2018, I had just finished my art degree and I didn’t do any art and wasn’t sure where to go with it. Then I went to Jess Johnson’s exhibition which I think really gave me permission to do more illustrative stuff. So, I felt like there was space for me.
In your last exhibition at City Art Depot your works had quite heavy themes to them. Do these artworks share those?
I hate the whole tortured artist thing. But I do feel like the seasons you’re in do affect what you make or what you’re drawn to. I was looking at this last night and I thought that it does seem a lot more restful than the last show. A lot calmer.
There’s perhaps less violence.
Less stabbing, haha. I still love, and am inspired by, those medieval artworks I was looking at. I love how silly the expressions often are but how that can be paired with something really violent. I think I’m still doing that with the heads. I want them to feel like an artefact, but I also like the expressions that don’t quite match the medium or theme. I did that in a more overt way in the last exhibition.
The furniture is rearranged the way I like, polymer clay, 65x95x95mm, 2023
Are you being more playful with these?
I didn’t intend to do a show with the polymer clay pieces. I just wanted to have space for play with art. My paintings take a really long time and I’m quite detail orientated with them; I can’t leave things alone if it’s not finished properly. I just wanted permission to have some play and it not be a big thing that was for something. Making it a fun experience again. I think you can get quite jaded sometimes making art.
I can see how you might get in your own head about it.
I think I wasn’t intending for them to look so silly. The expressions just came out. These were made while watching movies. We were watching a documentary The Cats of Mirikitani, and I thought, ‘Oh I’ll make a cat one’. I was using my immediate reactions to the films as prompts, not overthinking it too much.
So, each work corresponds to a movie or television show?
Kind of, yeah. We watched The Passion of Joan of Arc so I made one with a really big nose because there’s lots of close up, low angle, scenes.
Front and Back, polymer clay, acrylic paint, gold leaf, glaze, 85x95x75mm, 2023
Do these come together quite quickly?
Yeah. The polymer clay gets dry when you leave it overnight. If you don’t cook it in the over after two it starts cracking. So, I had to sculpt them over a day or two evenings then cook them to get a better result. Doing them quickly in a lounge with low light means they’re not the smoothest. It’s a matter of sticking the clay together, cooking it in the oven, and it’s done. I don’t mind demystifying that stuff. I think with art you find the thing you’re bad at and embrace it.
What I love about art is that you don’t have to be the best craftsperson to include new mediums. I feel it’s more about being innovative with the medium and making it work for you rather than adhering to traditional standards of making. Art feels safe for me because of this. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t doing little projects and learning new tactile skills. I feel confident in my own way of doing things.
Does the social aspect of making them with other people around affect the works?
It’s true, my flatmates do offer suggestions, but at the same time I only take that on board if I feel like it’s right. I don’t plan any of them. I would just start one and if it started to look like something else, I’d shape it into that a bit more. But most of them I started with the same head structure and see what happens by adding extra clay.
“Balm”, gouache on paper, 300x452mm, 2023
Are you drawing influence from other cultures? Foreign? Historic? Online?
Worldbuilding and creating connected systems is my main impulse with art making. I draw from a lot of different historical sources. Often religious or cultural artworks are devoid of names or signatures because they were just visual communicators for people and the concept of having a personal brand or anything like that was irrelevant and not important at the time. I like that they are their own self-contained things, almost appearing out of nowhere and can’t be traced back to a particular hand. That being said, I think a lot of my influences are artists that draw from ancient art forms in a contemporary way like Kushana Bush, Mu Pan and Kristen Liu-Wong.
You called them talismans in a description you wrote for us. How does that relate to the works?
I feel like I still have residual religious aspects in the way I think about things, positive and negative ones. I’m not a superstitious person but I grew up around a lot of superstitious people. I remember my mum being paranoid about objects, such as blaming something bad that happened on an object that someone had given her, having a spiritual element to objects. I like the idea of people buying these and bringing them into their home and them having a positive or negative effect on their home environment.
The titles for the works were all inspired by an Iain Banks book The State of the Art, where there are big spaceships which are the gods of the universe, and you’d go to a certain ship for example if you needed guidance in your life. Because the ships are AI that has advanced so far, they’re like deities. They name themselves, so they’re misinterpretations of old sayings or really dumb things, how you’d expect a computer to go through all the information out there and come to a phrase or word. One of the ships in the book for example is called Big Sexy Beast, haha.
The title for the exhibition is inspired by the backrooms of a museum where you might find all this stuff that has some spiritual or cultural significance but has been forgotten about in the corner or in a box.
Do you build that idea into the way you make your works look?
I really like that feeling of encountering something, like connotations that you maybe don’t understand. I don’t know what the symbols mean but there’s maybe a human similarity in the way the characters are going about their day. So, there’s something to identify with, even if you don’t understand the framework. I’m trying to create an esoteric framework but still have relatability in something mundane or normal.
Love me as I am, embroidery on cotton, lycra and felt, 280x280mm, 2023
Can you expand on the themes of the show for me? On that idea of capturing a feeling of encountering something unknown or unusual?
I think true awe is such a powerful experience. I’ve experienced this total removal of myself giving way for something else to inhabit me. It’s really hard to describe but I literally took myself out of the picture and I broke down all my psychological barriers in the process. It was actually pretty terrifying. I think through my art I’m really just trying to understand that experience and how opening ourselves up can affect us positively or negatively.
I think when you are religious you feel like there are malign or malignant entities stalking you all the time, that you are being watched. From a young age my Mum would say she had ‘eyes in the back of her head’ while on the other hand I was being told that the devil was probably in my room and I would have to dispel him to get a good night’s rest. So I think I have this residual anxiety of being watched and someone waiting for me to do something bad so they can criticise or terrorise me. I’m sure for some people this mindset makes them feel comforted and taken care of and sometimes I did have that, it’s this dichotomy between safety and terror. I think this show/the paintings are more about feeling comfortable sitting between these two things. Whereas the embroideries are the embodiment of an unknowable entity with motivations outside of our comprehension or experience.
I’m wondering what you see as the connection between your drawings, the embroideries and the clay works?
It’s a mishmash show, ay. It’s all part of the same world. I see the heads as physical objects that are in that world. I think it’s a lot easier starting with paintings where I’ve built up a visual language and then taking pieces out of that and having fun with it in a new medium.
I feel like all the head sculptures have their own personalities and expressions, I think it’s up to the viewer to decide if they are positive or negative entities that will fill up their physical and spiritual spaces. Or maybe the sculptures have a mind of their own and you can’t control that either. Curses and blessings are pretty subjective. I think they have the same looming presence that I give to my embroideries and paintings. Something beautiful but with unknown intentions. Sculpture feels like a nice way to bring your ideas into an interactive space, like a real world manifestation of the paintings.
Tears in 10k, gouache on paper, 300x226mm, 2023
Your works have references to nature throughout. Do you consider the natural world when making the works? Everything in the show also has a fleshy element to it in the tactile nature of the heads, the softness of the embroidery and cushiony forms in the paintings.
Kind of like jelly, haha. I’m not a very organised artist, I’m quite particular but not in a planning out way. Often, I’ll have a loose sketch and paint over it, seeing where it goes. I think there’s more room for the painting to grow organically with organic forms. I often start with a figure which is drawn up properly, then I’ll expand from there. The figures become part of the ecosystem. I don’t think I would do any close-up work of a character because it’s more about how they fit into the world where everything is just as important, without a human hierarchy.
In a way it’s intuitive and responsive?
The way I do it is in shapes. I’ll have the figure, then I’ll see a shape that is needed to fill in the composition and think what looks like that shape. It’ll happen throughout the painting process, evaluating what is needed next. It’s more fun that way. I find I’m not very motivated to paint if I know what it’s going to look like. I’ll let it speak for itself and let me know what it needs.
